Languages of Denmark
A large majority (86%) of Danes also speak English as a second language; it is mandatory for Danish students to learn from the first grade in the public elementary schools (), by far the most popular option in the country. In the 1st (or 3rd, depends on the school) grade of folkeskole, a third language option is given, usually German or French. The vast majority pick German (47% of Danes report being able to speak conversational German). The third most widely understood foreign language is Swedish, with 13% of Danes reporting to be able to speak it.
Comparison of Norwegian Bokmål and Standard Danish
The Danish diphthongs and (spelled as "ej" and "øj") correspond to the Norwegian diphthongs (in Oslo pronunciation) and (spelled as "ei" and "øy"). Besides that, a great many letter combinations are pronounced as diphthongs in Danish, but as usual vowel-consonant combinations in Norwegian. That is mostly due to the Danish letters "g" and "v" (colloquially also "b") being pronounced as semivowels and after a vowel: thus, "dag" (day) is pronounced in Danish, but in Norwegian; "lov" (law) is pronounced in Danish, but in Norwegian. Similarly, and are often spelled as "eg" and "øg" in Danish ("eg" may be pronounced in Norwegian, too, e.g. in "regne", "to rain"). The Danish pronunciation is therefore, as with "a" above, closer to English, while the Norwegian is more conservative, closer to its spelling.The most notable differences are, as already mentioned, the pronunciation of approximants in Danish, corresponding to voiced and voiceless stops in Norwegian and of "r" as a uvu-pharyngeal approximant in Danish, corresponding to an alveolar trill in (East) Norwegian ("skrige", "shriek" vs "skrike"). Furthermore, Danish has replaced the voiced/voiceless opposition in ) vs ) with an aspirated/nonaspirated one ( vs ), and the contrast between the two is neutralized syllable-finally and before schwa (in practice, in the core of native words, this means it is lost everywhere except word-initially). Thus, "begge" (both) and "bække" (brooks) are pronounced alike as . In Norwegian, the opposition is still voiced vs voiceless and it is preserved everywhere, with being aspirated in the onset of a stressed syllable (as in English and German).
The Danish is either vocalized or dropped altogether, after having influenced the adjacent vowels, in all positions but word-initially and pre-stress, making the Danish "r" very similar to the standard German "r". Also, note the Danish pronunciation of initial "t" as , displaying a hint of the High German consonant shift wherein German changed "t" to "z"/"tz" (cf. Danish "tid", German "Zeit").