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Lesson Transcript

INTRODUCTION
Anna: Hi everyone, I’m Anna.
Becky: And I’m Becky, and welcome to DanishClass101.com! This is Pronunciation Series, lesson 1, The Pronunciation of Consonants in Danish.
Anna: In this lesson we’re going to start with the basics and slowly work our way up!

Lesson focus
Becky: That’s right. And the focus of this lesson is Danish consonants.
Anna: Becky, do you know how many letters there are in the Danish alphabet? And how many of them are consonants?
Becky: We covered this in the All About series, didn’t we! hmm… Let’s see. The Danish alphabet consists of 29 letters, of which 20 are single consonants. But there are also 3 compound consonants that are derived from them.
Anna: Yes, that’s right!
Becky: The 20 single consonants and 3 compound consonants together create 23 distinct consonant sounds in Danish.
Anna: Ok, and we won’t keep you waiting any longer. Let’s jump right into the pronunciation of each consonant.
Becky: Great. Why don’t we start with those consonants that we already know from the English alphabet?
Anna: All right. Let’s look at these consonants first. They are b c d f g h j k l m n p q r s t v w x and z.
Becky: Because most consonants in Danish are pronounced in a similar way to English, we’re going to focus on the ones that differ in pronunciation. The most important thing to understand is that consonants will often have different pronunciations depending on whether they occur at the beginning or end of a syllable.
Anna: Let’s start with d. When starting a syllable, d is voiceless in Danish. For example der the Danish word for “there” and møde “meet”. When ending a syllable, d represents the sound “eth,” which is taken from the Old English letter by the same name.
Becky: “eth”?
Anna: Another example is “rød” which means “red”, the color.
Becky: The next one is g or “g”, which is also pronounced differently whether it’s at the beginning or end of a syllable. G also has different combination rules with vowels in a word.
Anna: The Danish g is a velar stop consonant at the beginning of the consonant, but at the end of the consonant g is opened and becomes an alveolo-palatal vocoid after front vowels and a labial vocoid after back vowels.
Becky: That sounds a bit complicated. Can you give us some examples?
Anna: Sure. With g as a velar stop consonant, we have “gade” which means “street.” With g after front vowels, we have “teglsten” meaning “brick” or “tile.” Finally with g after back vowels, we have “magre” meaning “lean” or “meager.”
Becky: Another consonant we want to mention is the Danish
Anna: j
Becky: or “J”. It is mainly pronounced as the English “y” in the word “you” both at the beginning and end of syllables.
Anna: Yes, when j is not the initial or final letter of a word, it often occurs after the letters “h,” “s,” and “t.” But no matter what, j is always pronounced the same. Unless it occurs in a loan word like “job” or “juice.”
Becky: Next up is the Danish...
Anna: K or “K”, it is either pronounced like the English “k” at the beginning of a syllable or like the “g” at the end of a syllable.
Becky: Could you give us an example?
Anna: Sure! For example, the “k” in the word “dansk” meaning “Danish” is pronounced like “g.”
Becky: Our next Danish consonant is the letter
Anna: P or “p”. It’s either pronounced like the English “p” in “parsley” at the beginning of a syllable or like a “b” at the end of the syllable. For example, the “p” in the word “dampende” meaning “steaming” is pronounced like a “b.”
Becky: Great! Next we have the Danish.
Anna: R or “r”. The Danish r is pronounced like an uvular trill or uvular approximant. At the beginning of a syllable it is pronounced like the German “r” in the word “reisen” meaning “(to) travel.” At the end of the syllable, r is pronounced like the “r” in the Danish word “svirpende” meaning “flicking.”
Becky: Only two more consonants to go. Our next Danish letter is
Anna: T or “t”. At the beginning of a syllable, it is pronounced like the English letter “t” in the word “tea.” And at the end of a syllable, t is pronounced like a “d.”
Becky: Can you give us an example?
Anna: Sure. For example, the letter “t” in the word “smelte” meaning “melt” is pronounced like a “d.”
Becky: Ok, and finally, we have the Danish consonant.
Anna: V or “v” , when said at the beginning of a word, is pronounced like the second “v” in the word “velvet.” At the end of the syllable, v is pronounced like the “v” in the Danish word “farve” meaning “color.”
Becky: Alright, that’s all the information about single consonants. Please refer to the accompanying lesson notes to review all the single consonants in Danish.
Anna: Now, let’s continue with the 3 compound consonants.
Becky: First, we’ll look at...
Anna: ch. This one is easy. Ch is pronounced like the “ch” in the word “champagne.” Ch is also pronounced like the “ch” in the English word “chicken” when used in English loan words.
Becky: Can you give us some examples?
Anna: Sure. For example, “charmerende” which means “charming.” And “chips” meaning “(potato) chips."
Becky: Next we have…
Anna: Ng or “ng”, it is similar to the “ng” in English words like “morning.”
Becky: Let’s have a Danish example.
Anna: Well, the Danish word for “honey” is “honning.” The “ng” is pronounced exactly the same way as when it occurs in an English word.
Becky: Finally, we have.
Anna: SJ or “sj”, sj is a variation of the letter “c” and is pronounced like the “sh” in the English word “show.” One example is “sjov” which means “fun” in Danish.
Becky: Right. Are you still with us listeners?
Anna: Of course they are!
Becky: I sure hope so because we are going to move on to 9 Danish consonants, which are also referred to as stops.
Anna: The 9 stops can be divided into 3 groups.
Becky: The first group consists of the consonants “p”, “t” and “k”.
Anna: When p, t, and k are in the initial position before a full vowel, they are aspirated stops.
Becky: Aspirated stop…. what is that?
Anna: Aspiration is a small puff of air that is released when you say a sound. When used with a stop, like p, t, and k, it is produced after you make the sound.
Becky: Can you give us some examples?
Anna: Sure. For example, p is an aspirated stop in words like “passe” meaning “to look after” or “take care of” and “pose” which means “bag.”
Becky: Could you give an example of words containing “t” as an aspirated stop?
Anna: An example is the t in “tand” which means “tooth.” Another word is “til” which simply means “to.”
Becky: Great. How about words with “k” as an aspirated stop?
Anna: Examples with k could be the words “krikke” meaning “horse”, and “komme” which means “come.”
Becky: Great! Please note, in all other positions, p, t, and k are unaspirated stops and end up sounding like “b,” “d,” and “g.” This also happens when they come after -s and when they’re doubled.
Anna: Exactly! For example, in the words “spille” meaning “play” or “act” and “tæppe” which has a double p and means “carpet” or “blanket”, the “p” is pronounced like a “b.” “Stop” also contains an unaspirated “p” that is pronounced like a “b.”
Becky: Listen for the unaspirated p sound. It will sound a lot like a b…
Anna: “Spille,” “tæppe,” and “stop." Now, examples with t could be “støj” meaning “noise,” “rotte” which means “rat,” and “kat” which means “cat,” of course. The “t”’ sounds in these words are all unaspirated, and therefore sound a lot like “d”’s.
Becky: Listen for the unaspirated t. It will sound a somewhat like a d sound.
Anna: That’s right - “Støj,” “rotte,” and “kat,” but unaspirated.
Becky: Let’s move on to the next group of stops.
Anna: Yes, next we have b d and g. B is easy because it is pronounced like a “b” in any position in a word. D is either pronounced in a ‘hard,’ ‘soft’ or ‘silent’ way.
Becky: Can you give us an example of a ‘hard’ d?
Anna: Sure. D is pronounced hard when it is the initial letter of a word or when it occurs before a full vowel. For example, “dag” meaning “day” and “soldat” which means “soldier” in Danish.
Becky: D is soft when it occurs after a vowel and when doubled.
Anna: For example, “møde” meaning “meeting” and “sidde” which means “sit.”
Becky: BUT there are exceptions to this rule. And you can check them out in lesson notes, where we have listed these exceptions.
Becky: First, let’s move on to the ‘silent’ “d”.
Anna: The d is silent in the combinations of -ld, -nd, and -rd or “ld”, “nd” and “rd” respectively. For example, the word “ild” which means “fire” contains a silent “d.” Another example is “mand” which means “man.” Notice how you don’t pronounce the “d”’s? The “d” is also silent in the word “bord” which means “table.”
Becky: Finally, we have g.
Anna: When it occurs as the initial letter of a word, it is aspirated and pronounced like g in the Danish word “gammel” meaning “old.”
Becky: And also in the word for “street” which we covered earlier,
Anna: “gade.”
Anna: Right! But like d, g can also be silent. For example, the word “spurgte” which means “asked” contains a “g” after the first vowel, but it is silent. Another example is “uge” which means “week.” This word also contains a “g,” but it isn’t pronounced.
Becky: Words ending with an -ig or containing these combinations also belong to the category of words with silent “g”’s. For example...
Anna: “Heldig,” which means “lucky.” You wouldn’t know that there’s a “g” at the end, if you just heard the word, would you?
Becky: That’s right! You’d have to see it written down. And now for the final group of stops.
Anna: Yes, the last group consists of “m “n” and a sound often represented by the letters “ng” in English.
Becky: This group is easy because all three are voiced no matter their position in a word. Let’s wrap this up with a little information on Danish word-final consonants.
Anna: Unlike Swedish and Norwegian, Danish word-final consonants are voiced.
Becky: This is because all the Danish forms with word-final voiced consonants have intervocalic forms and the voicing occurs when the consonants are in an intervocalic position.
Anna: Generally, their sounds when functioning as a final consonant are the same as how they are pronounced as initial consonants.

Outro
Anna: All right. That’s all about Danish consonants.
Becky: Yeah, the first step is the hardest, but you’ll gradually master Danish pronunciation by studying this series with us!
Anna: So keep practicing!
Becky: And we’ll see you next time! Bye!
Anna: Vi ses!

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