Pronunciation
How to read the pronunciations
Every word in the list carries a transcription in square brackets, and it is the only reliable guide to how the word sounds — Danish spelling certainly isn't. Twenty minutes here and the brackets stop being decoration.
hej [hɑj] tak [tak] hvad [ʋæð̠˕ˠ]
Press a speaker to hear it. Every Danish word on this page is playable.
The problem
Danish is not written the way it is said
Every language has some gap between spelling and sound. Danish has a canyon. Letters go missing, whole syllables collapse, and consonants at the end of a word turn into vowels — so a word you have read a hundred times can go straight past you in speech.
Three ordinary words, none of them rare or difficult: hvad [ʋæð̠˕ˠ] — four letters, two sounds, and the d is not a d. meget [ˈmajəð] — the g has become a j. spørgsmål [ˈspœɐ̯sˌmɔˀl] — the g is simply gone.
This is why the list gives you a transcription for every form of every word, not just the dictionary headword: 1,229 of its 2,000 entries carry one. The forms of a single verb can differ more than you would expect, and the transcription is the part that tells you so.
The alphabet in the brackets is the International Phonetic
Alphabet. One symbol, one sound, always — which is the whole
point of it. It is not an English pronunciation respelling, so
e is never "ee" and j is never "juh".
Notation
What the brackets and slashes mean
Open a word in the app and you may find more than one transcription, with different kinds of bracket around them. That is not indecision; each one is answering a different question.
| Word | As the app gives it | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| være | /ˈvɛːʁə/ / [ˈʋɛːɐ] / [ˈʋɛːɒ̽] | be |
| hvad | [ʋæð̠˕ˠ] / [ʋæ] / [ʋæː] / [ʋɑ̈] / [ʍæð̠˕ˠ] / [ʍæ] | what |
| have | /ha(ːˀ)/ / [(ˈ)hæ] / [ˈhɛˀ] / /ˈhaːvə/ / [ˈhɛːʊ] / [ˈhɛːʋə] | have |
| til | /te(l)/ / [tˢel] / [tˢe] | to |
/ /slashes — the broad version. The sounds Danish treats as distinct, without saying exactly how they come out. This is the one to learn a word by.[ ]brackets — the narrow version. What a speaker actually produces, in as much detail as the dictionary cared to record. Closer to reality and harder to read.- Several, separated by
/— real variants. Fast versus careful speech, or one region against another. They are alternatives, not a sequence: pick the first and move on. ( )parentheses — an optional sound. til as/te(l)/means the l is there in careful speech and gone in ordinary speech.
The cards further down all show a single broad transcription, with the symbol being taught picked out in bold.
The famous one
Stød: the little ˀ
Stød is a catch in the voice — a moment of creak partway through a vowel, as if you had started to cough and thought better of it. English has the same gesture in the middle of uh-oh, just not as part of any word.
It matters because it is the only difference between some pairs of words. Listen to each pair one after the other; the second word of each has the ˀ.
If you cannot hear it at first, that is normal and it is not urgent. Danes will understand you without it, and context does most of the work. But you will start hearing it before you can produce it, and the symbol in the transcription is what tells you where to listen.
The useful one
The two endings: ə and ɐ
These two symbols do more work than anything else in the list, because between them they account for the ending of an enormous number of Danish words — and neither ending sounds remotely like it is spelled.
Final -e is ə
The vowel in the second syllable of English sofa. Weak, central, over quickly. kunne [ˈkʰunə]
Final -er is ɐ
The same idea, more open — and note there is no r left in it at all. efter [ˈɛfdɐ]
Get these two right and a great deal of Danish falls into place at once, because they are how nearly every infinitive, plural and comparative ends.
Vowels
The vowels
Danish has a lot of them — more distinct vowel sounds than English, packed into a smaller space, which is why the transcriptions reach for symbols you may not have met. The English comparisons below are starting positions, not targets. Where they disagree with the clip, the clip wins.
ee in "see", but shorter and tenser
vi [vi] we
between "see" and "say" — no glide at the end
se [ˈseˀ] see
e in "bed"
men [mɛn] but
between "bed" and "bad"
gade [ˈɡ̊æːðə] street
a in "cat", further forward than English
han [han] he
a in "father", further back
mange [ˈmɑŋə] many
the "ee" of "see" with tightly rounded lips — German ü
ny [nyː] new
the "ay" of "say" with rounded lips — German ö
høre [ˈhøːʁə] hear
a more open ø, the vowel of French "sœur"
først [fœrst] first
oo in "boot"
hun [hun] she
o in French "beau" — pure, no glide to a w
to [ˈtˢoˀ] two
aw in "thought"
så [ˈsɔ] so
a more open ɔ, closer to "hot"
når [nɒːˀ] when
between the u of "cut" and the aw of "law"
og [ʌ] and
the a in "sofa" — this is the -e ending
kunne [ˈkʰunə] can
a more open schwa — this is the -er ending
efter [ˈɛfdɐ] after
Rounding is worth a special mention: Danish rounds its lips on vowels English keeps flat. y and ø are ordinary vowels here, and both are simply front vowels said with your lips pushed forward.
Consonants
The consonants worth knowing about
s, f, l, m, n and h behave close enough to English to leave alone. These are the ones that don't.
the soft d: NOT English "th". Tongue low and flat, closer to an English l or w
med [mɛð] with
r at the start of a word, made far back in the throat — French or German r
være [ˈvɛːʁə] be
r after a vowel: not a consonant at all any more, it just colours the vowel
mor [moːɐ̯] mother
v, but weaker — halfway to a w
ved [(ˈ)ʋeð] at
v and g at the end of a syllable become a w-glide
over [ˈɔwˀɐ] over
a soft g, the same idea as the soft d but further back
dag [daːˀɣ] day
ng in "sing"
mange [ˈmɑŋə] many
sh, with the tongue further forward
chance [ˈɕɑŋsə] chance
y in "yes"
ja [ja] yes
written b, and it sounds like an English p with no puff of air
by [ˈb̥yˀ] town
written d, and it sounds like an English t with no puff of air
du [ˈd̥u] you
written g, and it sounds like an English k with no puff of air
gå [ˈɡ̊ɔˀ] go
The soft d, ð, is the one to spend time on. It looks like the symbol for English th and it is not that sound. The tongue lies flat and low with its tip behind the bottom teeth, and the result is much closer to an English l or a w than to anything in this. med [mɛð] dag [daːˀɣ]
The other habit to build early: an r after a vowel is not a consonant. It merges into the vowel and colours it, which the transcription shows as ɐ̯ — mor [moːɐ̯]. Written b, d and g between or after vowels soften or vanish in the same way.
The small print
The marks above, below and between
Everything that is not a letter. Most transcriptions use two or three of these, and none of them changes which sounds are in the word — they say how those sounds are made and where the emphasis falls.
The syllable after this one carries the main stress.
kunne [ˈkʰunə] can
Secondary stress — the second half of a compound word.
arbejde [ˈarˌbajdə] work
The vowel before it is long.
være [ˈvɛːʁə] be
Stød. See the section above.
hund [hunˀ] dog
The consonant is released with a puff of air, as English p, t and k are at the start of a word.
på [pʰɔ̽] on
A t released with a hiss, halfway to a ts.
to [ˈtˢoˀ] two
Voiceless — said in the same place, with the voice off.
du [ˈd̥u] you
Not a syllable of its own: this vowel is a glide off the one before it.
mor [moːɐ̯] mother
The opposite: this consonant carries a syllable with no vowel at all.
verden [ˈʋaɐ̯d̥n̩] world
A syllable boundary, where it would otherwise be ambiguous.
derfor [ˈd̥eːɐ̯.foɐ̯] therefore
Where these come from
Two things to know before you trust a transcription
The list is not written in a single accent, or a single tradition. Most transcriptions come from Wiktionary's Danish entries, which draw on more than one editor and more than one convention; the rest were filled in for gaps, and are marked as such where the app shows a source. In practice that means you will meet r and ʁ for the same sound, and v and ʋ for the same sound. Read them as the same letter. It would be easy to normalise this away and it would mean overwriting a source with a guess.
Some marks are finer detail than you need. Small marks such as ◌̽, ◌̝ and ◌̠ nudge a vowel slightly — a little more central, a little higher, a little further back. They are a phonetician recording exactly what was said. You can read straight past them without losing anything.
About the audio. The 48 clips on this page are spoken by Sara, Apple's Danish synthetic voice — not a recorded Dane. She is a dependable guide to vowels, consonants and stød in single words, which is what this page is teaching, and a rough guide to the rhythm of a whole sentence, which it isn't. For that, and for the accent of an actual person, you want a human.
Try it
Read these before you play them
Eight everyday words where the spelling is at its least helpful. Work the transcription out first, then check yourself — that is the loop this page exists to make possible.
| Written | Said | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| hvad | [ʋæð̠˕ˠ] | what |
| meget | [ˈmajəð] | much |
| jeg | [jɑ̈(j)] | I |
| rigtig | [ˈrekti] | right |
| øjeblik | [øjəblek] | moment |
| egentlig | [eːˀɣəntli] | actually |
| selvfølgelig | [sɛlˈføljəli] | of course |
| københavn | [købənˈhɑwˀn] | Copenhagen |
And when someone asks you to say rødgrød med fløde — the phrase every Dane tries on a foreigner — you now have everything you need to work out why it is hard. Two soft d's, a rounded vowel English does not have, and an -e ending that is not an e.
Now go and read some transcriptions
Every word in the app carries one, for every form it has.
Open the app