Danish versus Dutch: Language Comparison
Dutch is primarily spoken in the Netherlands. In addition, a Dutch dialect known as Flemish is spoken in the northern part of Belgium (the southern part of Belgium uses French).
Meanwhile, Danish is the language of Denmark, a Scandinavian country situated at the northern border of Germany — and separated from Norway and Sweden by a narrow stretch of sea.
Denmark is only about 150 miles away from the Netherlands. Linguistic distance does not always match geographic distance, so how close are their languages, Danish and Dutch? Let’s find out.
Dutch and Danish are Germanic languages
Both Dutch and Danish are part of the Germanic language family, but they belong to different branches within that family.
The family of Germanic languages is divided into two subfamilies:
- the West Germanic languages (Dutch, German, English, .. )
- the North Germanic languages (Danish, Swedish, Norwegian ..)
| Language | Native Speakers (Millions) | Germanic Subfamily |
|---|---|---|
| English | 360–400 | West Germanic |
| German | 100 | West Germanic |
| Dutch | 24 | West Germanic |
| Swedish | 11.1 | North Germanic |
| Afrikaans | 7.2 | West Germanic |
| Danish | 5.5 | North Germanic |
| Norwegian | 5.3 | North Germanic |
As a North Germanic language, Danish comes from Old Norse (which was the language spoken by the Vikings).
Dutch descends from Frankish, a language that was spoken between the 5th and 9th centuries in areas that are today the Netherlands, Belgium, and north-western France.
Are Dutch and Danish mutually intelligible?
Languages are considered mutually intelligible when they are similar enough that their speakers can naturally understand each other without needing to study each other’s language.
Dutch and Danish are not mutually intelligible. They belong to separate branches within the Germanic language family, with Dutch belonging to the West Germanic branch and Danish to the North Germanic branch.
That Dutch and Danish are not mutually intelligible is not surprising when you consider that English, despite being in the same West Germanic branch as Dutch, isn't mutually intelligible with it.
Despite the absence of mutual intelligibility between Dutch and Danish, these languages do share some vocabulary similarities, as we will see with examples.
Similarities between Dutch and Danish
Vocabulary similarities between Dutch and Danish
Here are some examples of vocabulary words that are similar in Danish and Dutch:
| English | Danish | Dutch |
|---|---|---|
| house | hus | huis |
| mountain | bjerg | berg |
| yellow | gul | geel |
| force | kraft | kracht |
| peace | fred | vrede |
| flower | blomst | bloem |
| blue | blå | blauw |
| dog | hund | hond |
| art | kunst | kunst |
| freedom | frihed | vrijheid |
| guilt | skyld | schuld |
| tall | høj | hoog |
| expensive | dyrt | duur |
| happiness | lykke | geluk |
| vegetables | grøntsager | groenten |
| impossible | umulig | onmogelijk |
| careful | forsigtig | voorzichtig |
In terms of vocabulary, Dutch and Danish are more similar than either of these languages is to English.
To measure how similar two languages are in terms of their vocabulary, linguists calculate lexical similarity scores between them.
The Dutch-Danish lexical similarity score is higher than both the Dutch-English and the Danish-English lexical similarity scores. [1]
The reason is the large number of English words derived from Latin, which have entered the English language as loanwords from French.
Words spelled with double vowels are frequent in the Dutch language, in contrast to Danish where double vowels are rare.
In Dutch, double vowels serve to indicate long vowel sounds. Danish is also a language that distinguishes between short and long vowel sounds. In Danish, this is done by using double consonants to indicate that the preceding vowel is short.
The Danish language has 3 additional letters which are not found in Dutch. These are 'æ', 'ø' and 'å'. Although Dutch does not have any special additional letters, it does have the letter combination 'ij', which is a digraph that in some ways behaves as a separate letter.
Grammatical similarities between Dutch and Danish
The common ancestor language to Dutch and Danish, the “Proto-Germanic language” had a somewhat complicated grammar.
In the Proto-Germanic language, nouns were declined according to 6 grammatical cases.
Some Germanic languages have preserved systems of grammatical cases, for example, Icelandic and German.
In this respect, Dutch and Danish are similar in that they have done away with grammatical case declensions for nouns.
The differences between Dutch and Danish
Differences in vocabulary between Dutch and Danish
Despite the similarities in vocabulary between Dutch and Danish, they are not the most closely related Germanic languages:
- Dutch vocabulary is closer to German than it is to Danish.
(related article: comparison of Dutch and German) - Danish vocabulary is much closer to Norwegian and Swedish than it is to Dutch. (related article: comparison of Danish and Swedish)
Here are some examples of Dutch and Danish vocabulary words which are significantly different:
| English | Danish | Dutch |
|---|---|---|
| beautiful | smuk | mooi |
| belief | tro | geloof |
| money | penge | geld |
| car | bil | auto |
| dirty | snavset | vies |
| potato | kartoffel | aardappel |
| newspaper | avis | krant |
| woman | kvinde | vrouw |
| soft | blød | zacht |
| weird | mærkelig | vreemd |
| work | arbejde | werk |
| hungry | sulten | hongerig |
| funny | sjov | grappig |
| seasons | årstider | seizoenen |
| difficult | svært | moeilijk |
| breakfast | morgenmad | ontbijt |
| jealousy | misundelse | jaloezie |
| important | vigtig | belangrijk |
| easy | let | eenvoudig |
| wise | klog | verstandig |
| answer | svar | antwoord |
Differences in spelling between Dutch and Danish
The letter ‘z’ is not typically used in Danish vocabulary words although is fairly common in Dutch, appearing in about 7.5% of vocabulary Dutch vocabulary words.
Some examples:
- zijn (to be)
- bewijzen (to prove)
- verzamelen (to collect)
- langzaam (slowly)
The letter ‘w’ is generally not found in Danish vocabulary words, in contrast ‘w’ is a common letter in Dutch. About 10% of Dutch vocabulary words contain the letter ‘w’.
Some examples:
- blauw (blue)
- waarschijnlijk (probably)
- vrouw (female)
- ontwikkelen (to develop)
Another noticeable difference between Dutch spelling and Danish spelling is that double vowels are frequent in Dutch but not in Danish.
Looking at the thousand most common words in Dutch and Danish, we observe that:
- 21% of these Dutch words have a repeated vowel
- 0% of these Danish words have a repeated vowel
Conjugation is more difficult in Dutch than in Danish
A comparison of Dutch and Danish would not be complete without discussing verb conjugations.
In contrast to Dutch, Danish verbs do not conjugate according to number and person. In Danish, the verb has the same form for all subject pronouns.
For example, here is how the verb “to read” is conjugated in the present tense for both Dutch and Danish.
Dutch or Danish: which is easier to learn for anglophones?
Dutch and Danish are both relatively easy languages for English speakers to learn.
In fact, the Foreign Service Institute ranks languages into 4 categories according to their difficulty, and Danish together with Dutch are both in category 1 (easier languages that are most similar to English).
Despite this, Danish is known for having a pronunciation that is somewhat difficult for people learning the language.
In their written form, Dutch and Danish are both among the easiest languages to learn but in their spoken form Danish is a bit more difficult than Dutch.
To continue learning about the similarities and differences between Danish and Dutch, have a look at these lists of the 1000 most common Danish words, and the 1000 most common Dutch words.
References:- [1] Gábor Bella, Khuyagbaatar Batsuren, and Fausto Giunchiglia. A Database and Visualization of the Similarity of Contemporary Lexicons. 24th International Conference on Text, Speech, and Dialogue. Olomouc, Czech Republic, 2021. (http://ukc.disi.unitn.it/index.php/lexsim/)
- [2] (Map license)