(Note: You can click on blue and orange Danish text to hear its pronunciation)
This is the most difficult part of the language. Like English,
it is rarely pronounced the way it's written.
If you've already met a Dane, you might have been challenged
with this phrase:
(click to hear pronunciation)
Rødgrød med fløde means 'Red pudding with cream' (made with all kinds of berries)
It is fairly important to pronounce Danish correctly. Unlike English, which is more widely spoken, Danish does not easily tolerate deviations. You might on the odd occasion find yourself misunderstood because of a single sound, especially the farther away you move from Copenhagen. For example, in
(an egg) the g sounds a bit like a k. It is not pronounced with the voiced g as it is in English. This might sound trivial, but some Danish speakers will genuinely not understand you if you say egg.
The following pages will introduce you to the Danish alphabet and give examples of how each letter is pronounced in different words.
