Youth in Denmark
The use of English is frequent among young people under 25. English is the predominant second language and is in the school curriculum from the first grade. Roughly 90% of 15- to 21-year-olds speak English with other Danes at least once per week. Youth code switch from Danish to English with friends and classmates. English phrases or words are spoken in between Danish words. Codeswitching is a marker of youth identity and sign of opposition to adult culture. Youth use their language style to differ from adults.
Danish language
The sound system of Danish is unusual among the world's languages, particularly in its large vowel inventory and in the unusual prosody. In informal or rapid speech, the language is prone to considerable reduction of unstressed syllables, creating many vowel-less syllables with syllabic consonants, as well as reduction of final consonants. Furthermore, the language's prosody does not include many clues about the sentence structure, unlike many other languages, making it relatively more difficult to segment the speech flow into its constituent elements. These factors taken together make Danish pronunciation difficult to master for learners, and Danish children are indicated to take slightly longer in learning to segment speech in early childhood.