Danish and German: Language Similarities and Differences

Denmark and Germany are neighboring countries with a border in common. It’s easy to travel between them. For instance, there is a train that goes from Copenhagen (the capital of Denmark) to Hamburg (a large German city) and it takes about 5 hours.

Because of this geographical proximity, people often ask if Danish and German are similar languages.

Danish and German are part of the same language family. They are both Germanic languages (so is English, by the way). Languages from this family originate from a common ancestor language. Linguists call it the “Proto-Germanic language”.

Because of this common ancestry, Danish and German share quite a few similar vocabulary words. The small differences between these similar vocabulary words are not random: there are noticeable patterns.

Many of these patterns reflect a linguistic phenomenon called the High German consonant shift. Between the 3rd and the 8th century, there were a series of pronunciation changes that occurred in the German language.

These consonant shifts occurred in German but not in other Germanic languages like Danish, English, Dutch, etc.

Three of the main High German consonant shifts are the following:

• the (d→t) consonant shift
• the (k→ch) consonant shift
• the (t→z) consonant shift

Vocabulary similarities between Danish and German

The following tables present Danish and German vocabulary words side by side which illustrate these consonant shifts.

The German letter z is generally pronounced ‘ts’. So this consonant shift amounts to adding an ‘s’ sound after the ‘t’ sound.

German has different rules for capitalization than Danish. In German all nouns are capitalized, this is not the case in Danish.

Danish vs. German alphabet and pronunciation

In German and in Danish, there are some letters which are pronounced differently from the way they are pronounced in English:

In many German words, the letter v is pronounced like an English ‘f’ sound.
For example, the German word “Vogel” and the Danish word “fugl” (both translate to “bird”) are closer in pronunciation than in spelling.

The German letter j is pronounced like an English ‘y’. Similarly, the Danish letter j is often also pronounced like an English ‘y’ (except in loanwords). An example is the word ‘yes’ which translates to ‘Ja’ in both German and Danish (although they sound different both start with a y sound).

The German letter w is pronounced like an English ‘v’. While the letter w is not used in the spelling of Danish words (except in loanwords) it is common in German. For instance, German question words often start with a ‘w’: Was (what), Wer (who), Warum (why).

The letter z does not occur in the spelling of native Danish words. In contrast, it occurs fairly often in the spelling of German words. In German the letter z is pronounced like a ‘ts’ sound and not like an English ‘z’

Both Danish and German spelling favor the letter ‘k’ over the letter ‘c’. The letter ‘c’ is not used in the spelling of native Danish words (although it occurs in some loanwords, such as “succes” - which comes from the French word “succès” meaning “success” )

While the letter ‘c’ occurs frequently in German spelling, it is generally in the ‘ch’ or ‘sch’ letter combinations. For a ‘k’ sound, German spelling will typically use the letter ‘k’ instead of the letter ‘c’ (except in loanwords)

German-Danish vocabulary false friends

Although there are many similar vocabulary words between Danish and German, there are few which appear to be similar while in fact meaning different things.

In the context of language learning the term “false friends” refers to pairs of words from two different languages which sound alike but have completely different meanings.

So how close are Danish and German?

Although Danish and German are both Germanic languages that originate from the Proto-Germanic language they are not exactly siblings, instead they are more like distant cousins.

A more recent ancestor to the Danish language is Old Norse, the language spoken in Scandinavia during the Viking Age.

German (unlike Danish) does not descend from old Norse. German is a West Germanic language, while Danish is a North Germanic language.

Danish is much less close to German than it is to North Germanic languages like Swedish and Norwegian.

Danish and German differences and similarities in Grammar

German is considered to be a more difficult language than Danish for English speakers to learn.

In fact, the US Foreign Service Institute ranks Danish as a category 1 language (the easiest category) while German is ranked as a category 2 language. They estimate that compared to Danish, studying German takes 33% longer to reach the same level of working proficiency.

The difference in difficulty between Danish and German is not a question of vocabulary: it is due to differences in grammar.

The German language has preserved some grammatical features which have disappeared from other Germanic languages such as Danish and English.

The aspect of German grammar which is the most challenging for English speakers is the use of declensions to indicate grammatical cases. These exist in the Danish parent language Old Norse but they have mostly disappeared from the Danish language used today.

English speakers are not accustomed to declensions for grammatical cases as these have mostly disappeared from the English language. In English, there are only traces of these left, for example, the distinction between ‘who’ and ‘whom’ (which many English speakers don’t even use much).

To see more examples of German and Danish vocabulary words, see these lists of the 1000 most common German words, and the 1000 most common Danish words.