The Danish language is a North Germanic language. It has speakers of up to 6 million people. This language is also quite popular among new language learners. Some communities speak the Danish language in Greenland, Germany, and the Faroe Islands. Many people also speak this language in Sweden, Norway, Canada, Argentina, and Brazil, with the United States as well. This is a happening and a quirky language that is interesting to learn and study. Translation services in the Danish language are also popular among different businesses all across the globe due to the whopping number of speakers settled worldwide. 

Professional Danish translation services help to pave the way for smooth expansions and operations overseas. These help with better communication with Danish communities, understanding their preferences, and widening the reach among the Danish diaspora spread all over the world. However, accurate translation has its benefits. Inaccuracies in the Danish language can lead to certain conflicts and controversies. Businesses must understand the basics of the Danish language before they select a Danish translation vendor to deal with translation services. The Danish language has its distinct features and there are particular fun facts about the language knowing which can make you engage in the translation process for the better. 

Here are a few important language facts about Danish that can help to understand this language leading to accurate and precise Danish translation services.

Large Inventory of Vowels 

Danish is popular for its vowel wonderland. It has a large vowel inventory with 27 distinctive vowels. Nine of the most used vowels are a, e, i, o, u, y, æ, ø, å. This makes the language one of those with most vowel sounds. There are a lot of tongue twisters in this language. For instance, rødhåd is red-haired, and ‘svigermor’ means mother-in-law. This makes the language interesting and fun to translate, and also the chosen translation agency can work vigilantly considering your knowledge of this language. 

Influence of Other Languages 

Languages naturally have an impact on their fellow regional languages. The Danish language is no different. Like its fellow languages Norwegian and Swedish Danish have a great influence on Low German back in the Middle Ages. English has also influenced Danish since the 20th century. 

Stød Factor 

Another fun fact about the Danish language is its stød factor which adds a quirky punch to the Danish language. This adds a glottal stop and is also similar to a brief cough as people quote. There is no option of changing it and replacing or misplacing this can change the whole meaning. The word ‘tale’ for instance with a stød means ‘speak’ and while the word ‘tale’ when used without this factor means the word ‘number’ such is the level of confusion that can occur without considering it. Therefore, it should be made clear to translators who are hired for Danish translation services to avoid ambiguities. 

Vikings in Tongue 

The Danish language comes from the North Germanic branch so it has roots tied to the Old Norse language. Not only this, around 2000 noncompound words in Danish language originated from the Old Norse. Around 1200 of these are nouns with 500 verbs. Moreover, 180 are adjectives. Whereas the rest of the words have different classes. Danish is also a language that has a large number of loanwords. These words are from Middle Low German and started becoming part of the Danish language during the medieval period.

The influences from the Old Norse and Middle German make the words such as ‘barn’ which means child and ‘mand’ means man retain the centuries-old Viking age origin. 

Long Compound Words

Translating to the Danish language can be a tough job, therefore, the best translation agency must be hired to achieve the required translational goals. As Danish language is full of long descriptive compound words, which can be tough for a non-native to understand. What do you think are Danish words for an open-faced sandwich? It is ‘smorrebrod’. ‘Handbold’ is a word for a fast-paced handball game. So Danish words can make you have some brain gymnastics, you have to be prepared for that as a business that plans to operate among Danish speakers.

Mutual Intelligibility 

Understanding and knowing about the mutual intelligibility of the Danish language can make the translation of this language to and from certain languages easy. It has great mutual intelligibility with the Norwegian and Swedish languages. The speakers of all three languages can manage to understand each other to a great extent. As the linguists suggest intelligibility, among the languages is kind of asymmetric. This goes in different ways for each language. Norwegian speakers have this edge of being able to understand Danish and Swedish better and these people can understand each other well. Likewise, the Danes and Swedes can catch the Norwegian language better than each other’s languages. The reason for this mutual intelligibility with the Norwegian language is that it has a border with Sweden, which makes it inevitable for the people to adopt the pronunciation and other similarities in vocabulary. 

Conclusion 

Danish is a quirky however somewhat complex language. A few facts about this language make it tough for the new speakers to understand and learn it. Moreover, there are certain facts that people need to know before indulging in Danish translation. This language has a huge inventory of vowels and has great mutual intelligibility with Norwegian and Swedish languages. Moreover, it is rich in compound words.