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Language Information

Danish is spoken by the 5 million inhabitants of Denmark, and is also the official language of Greenland and the Faroe Islands, which are considered part of Denmark. It is one of the Scandinavian languages, which constitute a branch of the Germanic languages, in turn a part of the Indo-European family.

Danish is most closely related to Norwegian and Swedish. During the centuries that Denmark and Norway were one country, a dialect closer to Danish than Norwegian was spoken in the Norwegian cities. This is still in use today and is sometimes referred to as "Dano-Norwegian."

The Danish alphabet is the same as the Norwegian, consisting of the twenty-six letters of the English alphabet plus æ, ø, and å at the end. Before 1948 the å was written aa. The spelling reform of that year also abolished the German practice of beginning all nouns with a capital letter.

Denmark, Faroe Islands, Greenland (Danish).

Family: Indo-European
Subgroup: Germsnic
Branch: Northern (Scandinavian)

Writing Sample

Translation

Many years ago there was an Emperor who was so excessively fond of new clothes that he spent all his money on them. He cared nothing about his soldiers, nor for the theater, nor for driving in the woods—except for the sake of showing off his new clothes. He had a costume for every hour of the day. Instead of saying as one does about any other king or emperor, "He is in his council chamber," the people here always said, "The Emperor is in his dressing room."

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN, The Emperor's New Clothes