[Utah Binger]

I lived on Jylland, Denmark between October 1960 and December 1961 and in Copenhagen for another two years and became totally fluent in Danish. I always found it interesting when speaking with farmers in remote villages in that their dialect sounded more like English than Danish.

Norwegian and Danish are virtually the same written language but the Danish is in the throat and Norwegian is closer to the lips, hence the accents are totally different. It takes me a week of listening to Norwegian for my ear to begin to hear the language.

Fabulous people and great places. Their politics stink.

[Celtic Conservative]

We had a Danish exchange student in the early 1980's. She was very fluent in english and after just a month had no discernible accent. With her light skin and strawberry blonde hair many assumed her to be my sister at first. So I get what you're saying about Danish "sounding" more like english.

CC

[Yardstick]

I recently went to Copenhagen on business and prepped with a How to Speak Danish book and CD and was surprised at how difficult it was. I easily learned Spanish later in life after having taken French in high school but Danish is at a whole other level. It’s not the grammar but the pronunciation, which is brutal. In fact I would generally agree with this guy’s theory that the grammer is remarkably similar to English. English is sort of like a scandinavian language with a simplified accent. The Danes I know had no problem learning English but I found it much tougher the other way around.