I always wanted to ask a German this. Is the Danish language the same as German? I took German in High school and I saw a Danish girl on TV at the time and it sounded alot like what I was learning. Can Germans understand Danish without studying Danish?

thedog said:

Well I´m a german and 1 thing is 4 sure: U can´t understand danish unless u´ve learned it. So normally danish and german people can´t communicate unless they know the language. Maybe the people in the northern part of Germany understand danish, ´cuz the dialects are close 2 dutch.
But normal mortals like me got problems 2 talk 2 danish people. Hope it helped u.

Good question. I'm not German, but I can give you an answer. No, Germans do not understand Danish without some studying. On the other hand, Norwegians, Swedes and Danes understand each others languages. There might be some words that are common in all 4 languages thoug, or at least close. Take the english word "football".
Denmark: fotbold
Sweden: fotboll
Norway: fotball
Germany: fussball

Well, I hope this helped...

Ziese said:

Yup. U're right. Some danish sentences r understandable 4 northern german 'cause they speak a slang german called 'Plattdeutsch' which is quite familiar 2 danish or dutch. And it sounds a bit like english

Marten

don't mention the war!

oops... mentioned it once and i think i got away with it!

Trond said:

What about "tennis"?

nuthinbuttamuffin said:

Aw lay off, Basil!

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[Edited 5/26/12 7:05am]

gooeythehamster said:

Welcome 2 Fawlty Towers!

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As far as for me, definetily no. I'm not from Germany, but from Austria so german is my language and I don't understand one word of danish. Dutch is a different story, theire are quite some similarities to german.

German people (like me) may be able to understand a bit of dutch, but not danish. That´s a different language...

Thanks to all.

Nightcrawler said:

Let's set the record straight:

The only languages germans understand: German, Plattdeutsch, Bavarian & Switzer-Deutsch. These are languages which have german as foundation.

Germans do not understand the dutch language unless they study...In general, Germans are very bad in foreign languages (don't mention the war, indeed!), they don't learn languages actively in school and all foreign tv-shows are dubbed into the german language!

[/quote]


Let's set the record straight:

The only languages germans understand: German, Plattdeutsch, Bavarian & Switzer-Deutsch. These are languages which have german as foundation.

Germans do not understand the dutch language unless they study...In general, Germans are very bad in foreign languages (don't mention the war, indeed!), they don't learn languages actively in school and all foreign tv-shows are dubbed into the german language![/quote]

That's only partly true. It's difficult for a german speaking person to understand Switzer- Deutsch. Moreover I totally disagree about Germans being bad in foreign languages. I'm not from Germany, so I have no reason to support them in any way, but when you travel the world in most countries you can only dream of people being able to speak foreign languages as well as Germans. And yes, they do learn languages in school.