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Danish Language Course:
If you're interested in learning to speak Danish or simply curious, you've come to the right place. From vocabulary and grammar to conversational and correct pronunciation via audio phrases, this online based course is dedicated to the Danish which focuses on pronunciation, essential grammar and real life phrases to help you satisfy your need to learn in quick time. It's easier to remember phrases by listening, repeating and memorizing and this site will help you by providing all the needed material.
Danish Language - A quick overview:
Danish (Dansk) is a Scandinavian language and falls in the category of North Germanic languages, Dansk is a spoken by 6.5 Millions mostly in Denmark, and it is also spoken in in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany. It is also official in Greenland. The important factor which should be considered by folks learning Dansk is that the pronunciation or spoken one is somewhat varies than written one. Although Dansk is not a vocabulary rich but yet existing words are being used to create more meanings, an another factor to consider is that the Dansk being spoken in capital region (Copenhagen) also known as Rigsdansk have a slight different dialect than compared to the dialects in other parts of Denmark. The sound of Dansk may make the foreigners surprised because of its accent as most of the foreigners comments about Dansk as sounds like a person speaking with hot potato in his month, in fact most of the sound comes from the throat and this makes this a difficult to learn for foreigners but yet people consider it is adventurous test while learning it.
Similarities between Scandinavian languages:
The two Scandinavian languages Swedish and Danish derives from the Eastern Norsk dialect group, it’s a believe that Norwegians could understand both Dansk and Swedish and both Danes and Swedes can understand Norwegian better as compared to they both understand each other, if we talk about written Dansk, its very close to Norwegian and its also been observed by the foreigners that difference between the three main Scandinavian languages is not great. Danish had undergone many changes over a large period of time and though it had also loaned words from others, therefore the rules for the spelling have often changed.
Danish Language Sound System:
Dansk can be categorized as language with a unique sound system among other world’s languages, a notable feature called “Stød” or “Glottal stop” makes it quite distinguished, which is actually considered as development of word accents, and because of this Dansk is called a flat one, in most part of Denmark particularly in the southern region there is more low Germanic impact and stød is absent in most cases. The stress is more phonemic as compared to neighboring Scandinavian languages.
Danish Alphabet:
The first objective while learning a any language is first to get familiar with its alphabets.. The best part is that alphabets has many letters in common with the English alphabet but however, Danish language has unique vocal and tonal sounds that quite differs even from other Scandinavian and European languages, it is important to try to get command over the actual tones as early in language learning as possible. Using a pronunciation guide with sounds and text will prove extremely helpful.
The Glottal Stop:
The glottal stop is very important factor and something unique and special, as it is a sound which is not very common in many languages. It is a kind of phoneme which can give some words quite different meaning. Although it is not an unknown sound in English and is sometimes sounds in energetic voice and particularly in "not" [nå't] in British English. For most of the foreigners the glottal stop may be difficult to use correctly, but never mind even Danes cannot always use it in a correct way or in correct sound particularly not if they are speaking one of our dialects.
The glottal stop only hits the stressed syllable of a word. Both vowels and consonants can be hit but never a long vowel. The glottal stop is indicated by a single quote like: [']
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