Did you know that The Little Mermaid and The Ugly Duckling were written by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen?
Danish is a North Germanic language derived from Old Norse. It is the official language of Denmark and is spoken by more than 5 million people worldwide.
Whether your reasons for learning Danish are personal or professional, it’s important that you identify your learning goals and preferences. This way, you’ll be able to find the best resource that works for you.
In this article, we share some of the best apps to learn Danish and what to avoid. Explore these handpicked best apps, courses, classes & other media for learning Danish and see what fits you best. Let’s get started!
Table of Contents
Resources for Learning Danish Online
Textbooks, courses, podcasts, and classes: there are plenty of ways to learn Danish, even if you’re thousands of miles away from Copenhagen.
Online Danish Classes and Language Exchanges
There’s no better way to learn a language than to put it into practice. And since actually speaking Danish might be one of the most challenging parts of learning the language, classes and language exchanges can be invaluable.
Online Classes Where You Can Go at Your Own Pace
italki is one of the oldest and most well-known language-learning marketplaces, which gives it a significant advantage: it has the most teachers. It also tends to be slightly cheaper than competitor companies. And while quality isn’t its selling point, if you search enough, you’re bound to find a teacher you get on with.
Plus, we’re a fan of its community features, which you can access via the app. These include a forum and the chance to publish your writing or audio recordings for community corrections.
Alternatively, you might like Verbling. Although it has fewer teachers, we like its payment processing options as well as its online classroom. Teachers are also vetted before they’re allowed to join the platform.
Verbal Planet also has a handful of reasonably priced and well-reviewed Danish teachers. If you’re looking for plenty of feedback, it might be a good choice for you: the teachers will evaluate your speaking, listening, reading, and writing after each class. If that sounds stressful, though, you might be better off skipping this platform.
Preply also has several Danish teachers. It is really easy to change the tutor if things don’t work out. What we like about Preply is its classroom technology, it now offers lots of free materials to aid your language learning. Its chat feature (with your tutor!) is really nice too.
Amazing Talker, at the time of this article’s publication, has just one Danish tutor – but hopefully, that number will keep on growing.
Group Online Danish Classes
You can book online private and group classes with Danskbureauet. It doesn’t give you the flexibility and range of choice that websites like italki and Verbling offer; in fact, after your free trial, you have to sign up for a minimum of 12 weeks. However, you’ll benefit from a structured syllabus, and the teachers have many years of experience.
With Copenhagen Language Center, you won’t have to make quite such a long commitment. Their group courses last for 7–8 weeks and go from complete beginner up to B2/“pre-advanced.” As well as the video classes, you’ll be expected to do two to five hours of private study every week.
Laerdansk Online/Netdansk is also designed for long-term, online learning, although you only have to commit to four weeks at a time. They estimate that it will take you 12 weeks to reach A1, 16 to reach A2, and so on. Their courses should take you up to C1.
Community Feedback
Sometimes, you don’t want an hour-long class or Danish pronunciation drills. You just want feedback about whether or not you’re saying something right or an answer to a quick question. You can turn to forums and community-feedback apps for this.
The HiNative app will let you ask questions and also answer other people’s queries. We think it offers a lot of value for any language learner, even if not all questions or answers are entirely useful.
On Langcorrect, you can share Danish writing and essays in order to receive feedback from other learners. Don’t forget to help out the community by correcting someone else’s writing, too.
The WordReference forums are another place to post questions and receive answers. And while Reddit’s Danish Language sub isn’t very active, it’s still worth searching for past posts.
Language Exchanges
Ready to not just study Danish but actually use it? It’s time for a language exchange.
There are plenty of apps you can use, such as HelloTalk (reviewed here), Speaky (reviewed here), and Tandem (reviewed here). While they all work in a fairly similar way, there are some differences, so make sure to check out the reviews as well as our HelloTalk vs Tandem showdown.
If you want to move from app-based to real-world exchanges, MeetUp has 25 different Danish-language groups around the world. Can’t find one near you? Try a general language exchange to see if any Danes come along, or start your own group. Alternatively, you could browse local Facebook groups for options.
If meeting up with strangers, however, remember to stay safe: meet up in public spaces, don’t feel pressured to give out your contact details, and leave if you feel uncomfortable.
Best Apps to Learn Danish and Danish Language Courses
Taking a language course, whether you go at your own pace or follow a fixed schedule, can add structure to your studies. They can also be motivating since you can measure your progress in modules and levels. And even though you won’t find Danish on Rosetta Stone or Busuu, you’ve got plenty of language courses to choose from.
Depending on your learning style, you might find you prefer an audio course (great for improving your listening and keeping your hands free for other tasks), an app (easy to squeeze in a few minutes here and there), or one with a wide mixture of activities. We’ve included a variety of course styles to help you pick the right one for you.
While we wouldn’t use DanishClass101 as a standalone course, we think it makes for an excellent supplementary resource. It has a huge range of audio and video lessons on Danish vocabulary, grammar, and culture. It has a ton of free stuff, and its paid versions are definitely worth your money – you get 1-on-1 tutoring sessions and personal feedback.
If you’re an aural learner, or simply like to learn on the go, Pimsleur might be a good fit for you. We find it fairly effective, and it gives you lots of listening and speaking practice, although we would have liked more grammar explanations. Bear in mind that each lesson is 30 minutes long. One biggest and best feature of Pimsleur is that it MAKES you speak Danish from Day 1. There is no better motivator than hearing yourself speak the target language right away, pronouncing it correctly!
Mango Languages has a heavy focus on speaking Danish and will quickly get you to build your own sentences. We think it’s best for beginner-level learners, and we like how you can compare recordings of yourself speaking Danish to native speakers. It helps you see where your pronunciation isn’t quite right, and you can pause the lesson to practice it as many (or few) times as you wish.
Speakdanish is a popular course with a heavy focus on pronunciation. However, we felt it was unengaging and hard work compared to other courses, so try out the free content before you commit.
For something more bite-sized and with more grammatical explanations, try Babbel. We also like its speech-recognition technology that gives you feedback on your pronunciation, although we found it occasionally didn’t work as we had hoped.
Dansk Her&Nu/Dansk her og nu is a free online course supported by the Danish government. If you already know some basic Danish, it’s a great resource. However, we wouldn’t recommend it for complete beginners studying alone. Not only does it not use any English, but you start off with some fairly long texts.
Strokes International’s Danish course might seem a little old-fashioned – and we’re not talking about the vocabulary. You’ll need to download it onto your computer before you can use it. Despite that, it seems to be a fairly thorough and effective course.
Lower-intermediate learners might like Glossika. Although it can be buggy and we found several language errors, it could be a good option if you’re learning additional languages alongside Danish.
Bluebird Languages has several short, free video clips you can watch. It has a strong focus on speaking and listening, but we found some mistranslations and the occasional grammatical error.
Sundhedsdansk is designed to help people new to Denmark understand the healthcare system and learn extremely basic medical vocabulary and phrases. It seems too superficial and is all in Danish, so we’d recommend pairing it with further word lists, a dictionary, and flash cards. Be warned that at times it seems more concerned with teaching you to wash your hands and use a handkerchief than with how to communicate with a medical professional.
You’ll also find some Danish courses on Udemy. Since Udemy is just a marketplace, the depth, teaching style, and quality of the courses can vary greatly. Make sure to read the syllabus and reviews before you sign up for one.
Online Danish Courses Like Duolingo
Duolingo gets a bad rap, but don’t write it off without trying it. We think it can be a fun (and free!) additional resource that will add a touch of gamification to your studies.
That being said, if you’re looking for a quick, fun, gamified language app, you’ve got a lot to choose from – and some of these Duolingo competitors, while less well-known, might be a better choice for you. One notable good option you should try is Ling. It’s fun-focused like Duolingo, and yet it tries to be more organized. A good deal!
When we compared Memrise and Duolingo, we felt Memrise was slightly better for more serious students while still being fun for beginners. It also has community-made Danish courses on everything from numbers to grammar. In fact, you’ll even find a couple on Duolingo’s Danish course.
Looking for another Duolingo-esque option but with a few more features? Try Ling. We’re a fan of the native audio (unlike Duolingo’s text-to-speech automated audio), as well as its slightly more well-rounded approach to learning a language. Even so, we think it’s probably best suited to beginners.
Mondly, on the other hand, left us disappointed. There’s nothing outright bad about it, but it feels slightly disorganized and we just think there are better options available.
Danish Language Courses You Should (Probably) Avoid
Once upon a time, DanskABC was probably a great resource. It’s reasonably priced, designed for students with some basic Danish knowledge, and has a wide range of materials. However, it relies completely on Adobe Flash Player. If you’ve already got some basic Danish knowledge, we think you’ll be better off trying out some of the other upper-beginner courses we’ve mentioned, such as Danish Her&Nu or DanishClass101.
The same goes for Online Dansk. It looks fairly promising, and despite being Danish-only, it’s still beginner-appropriate. Hopefully, they’ll redo the course without Adobe Flash Player in the near future. Until that happens, we’d choose one of the other courses on our list.
Moving on from courses that are just technologically outdated, there are some that we can’t recommend because they have a poor educational foundation, contain numerous errors, and in our opinion, are more likely to leave you frustrated and demotivated than speaking Danish.
17 Minute Languages promises to teach you Danish in just 17 minutes a day, but we found it dull and full of bad translations or misleading explanations.
Transparent Language is low on explanations, and we’re not convinced you’ll be able to create your own sentences or communicate in Danish after using it.
When we tried Cudoo, we felt that the course was superficial, lacked explanations, and had almost zero effective exercises for drilling material. It seemed like a waste of our time.
As for Language101, it’s eye-wateringly expensive and left us frustrated and overwhelmed. It’s also set up in such a way that beginners have to start off by constantly marking their attempts to speak Danish as “wrong” – something that seems masochistic and extremely demotivating to us.
Danish Vocabulary Builders and Word Games
Ever found yourself ordering toast for breakfast, even though you don’t really like toast, just because it’s the only word on the menu that you understand?
That’s where flashcards, word lists, and vocabulary games can come in handy. They’ll soon get you saying grød (porridge), blødkogte æg (soft-boiled egg), and appelsinjuice (orange juice, not apple) instead.
Drops is a fun app that will remind you to memorize words for a few minutes every day. We were impressed with the amount of vocabulary you can learn.
You might also like the Simply Learn app from Simya Solutions. We think it’s a pretty good app, but it probably wouldn’t be our first choice. Firstly, it only has half as many words as Drops for you to learn. Secondly, it’s from the same team who built Ling, which we mentioned above. Since Ling also teaches some basic grammar, reading, and writing, we’d probably pick that above Simply Learn.
Looking to also test your reading comprehension and word recall? Try Clozemaster. It will show you a series of Danish sentences, and you’ll have to fill in the gap with the correct word. If you understand Danish pretty well but can’t remember words when speaking, this could be helpful. Bear in mind that there’s no structure, so the sentence difficulty will vary. We’ve reviewed it in detail here.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re learning Danish through English, Somalian, or Vietnamese: Lexin Billedtema has themed vocabulary for you. The only requirement is that you know the name of your language in Danish, as the initial page is Danish only.
Once you’ve clicked on the right language, you’ll be taken to a table of contents in your own language. Click on a theme to see labeled illustrations. You can then switch the labels between Danish and your own language, and listen to audio recordings. There’s no inbuilt way to practice output or drill the language, so you’re best off making your own flash cards.
If you’re vacationing in Denmark or going on a business trip, and not actually looking to master the language, uTalk could be a good option. It contains phrases on topics ranging from shopping and directions to military peace and going skiing. We like that all the phrases have been recorded by native speakers. However, if you’re the type of person who gets frustrated at not scoring 100%, this might not be the app for you – some of the memory games are pretty hard.
Loecsen contains 17 themed word lists. We like how much control it gives you over how you drill them, not to mention the way it tracks which words you struggle with.
LingQ might appeal to you if you’ve already mastered a lot of the basic vocabulary, or you’re regularly reading a lot in Danish. You can look up words while reading texts, and the app will automatically add them to a list and nudge you to review them. While we think it’s a helpful reading tool, we find the review system slightly disorganized.
Sometimes the best flashcards and word games, however, are the ones you’ve made yourself. And while some people might find pen-and-paper versions are the most effective ones, more aural learners – or people who simply don’t want to carry a large pack of flashcards around with them – might prefer to use an app.
Anki will let you create your own flashcards or download someone else’s shared deck. For example, this one is well-rated and has over 8,000 cards. We like that you can add audio and pictures to the flashcards, as well as how Anki adjusts to how difficult you find a particular word or phrase.
Alternatively, try Brainscape. It’s similar but with a slightly more modern interface.
Danish Grammar Guides and Exercises
For many students, grammar is the most frustrating, confusing, and fiddly part of studying a language. And while studying just grammar can be a boring way to learn a language, sometimes, you need to review a grammatical concept or do some exercises to check that you’ve understood it correctly.
Try Basby. Whether it’s word order, declension, or any other aspect of grammar, this website contains English-language explanations along with some brief exercises.
Still struggling? Vores Fællessprog is more superficial than Basby. However, we found the explanations to be more accessible. Click the buttons at the bottom of the screen to be quizzed on the content in a pop-up window.
Looking for some more in-depth exercises? Drill your conjugations with The Danish Study. We think it’s a useful supplementary tool.
Learn Danish on YouTube
When it comes to learning Danish, YouTube has one very big advantage: you’ll get plenty of practice at listening to how words are pronounced. Here are some of the ones that most impressed us.
The YouTube channel Mic’s Languages has a playlist dedicated to learning Danish. Mic also has a handy blog post on Danish pronunciation.
On Danish Mastery, you’ll find over 300 videos. A lot of them are members-only content, but there are still enough free ones that it’s worth checking out. Besides, the premium packages are affordably priced, so if you really like these videos, it could be worth the investment.
David Jørgensen has a wide range of videos teaching you Danish. Bear in mind that almost no English is used, not even for the video names.
You’ll also find some of the courses and apps we’ve already mentioned have their own YouTube channels. DanishClass101, for example, has playlists dedicated to level-appropriate listening comprehension exercises, as well as themed playlists and their quick-and-simple Danish in Three Minutes series.
Podcasts in Danish
Podcasts are a win-win option: you get to practice your listening with material that you find interesting. And you can do it while you’re jogging, commuting, cooking, or doing whatever you want to.
If you’re a foodie, Så længe det kan spises might be a good choice for you. Each episode is short – or “bite-sized,” as the podcast’s creators like to say – and takes place in a different Danish restaurant.
Like we mentioned earlier, DanishClass101 is a super solid Podcast in Danish language learning. It has a huge range of audio and video lessons on Danish vocabulary, grammar, and culture. It has a ton of free stuff, and its paid versions are definitely worth your money.
Third Ear is a Danish podcast so popular that one of its episodes was signed up for a cinema adaptation. Its serialized stories and cliffhangers make it an entertaining option. Bear in mind that even though the podcast is in Danish, one of the co-hosts is famous for his British accent.
Love debates, ethics, and philosophy? Try Mads & Monopolet. Since they cover a wide variety of topics, you’re bound to find something interesting.
Harddisken is no longer updated, but techies might find its back catalog of episodes interesting.
If none of these podcasts appeal to you (or you’ve already binge-listened to them all), try searching for something more to your tastes on DR. There are plenty of podcasts to choose from.
