Danish is a North Germanic language, derived originally from Old Norse, and part of the Indo-European language family. It belongs to what is traditionally known as the East Scandinavian languages, along with Swedish.

It is spoken by about six million people, principally in Denmark, Greenland, the Faroe Islands and in the region of Southern Schleswig in northern Germany, where it has minority language status. Also, minor Danish-speaking communities are found in Norway, Sweden, the United States, Canada, Brazil, and Argentina. Due to immigration from Denmark, about 10% of the population of Greenland speak Danish as their first language.

Danish is closely related to Norwegian and Swedish. The three languages developed from Old Norse which was spoken in the areas of Scandinavia that are now Norway, Denmark and Sweden. To this day, Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes can talk to each other without an interpreter. Despite the high degree of mutual intelligibility it would not be correct to call the three languages dialects, because Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes see these languages as standardized official languages of their respective countries with separate norms for speaking and writing.

Despite its relatively small size, many languages are represented in Denmark due to immigration. These languages include Arabic, Urdu, Polish, German, Turkish and Romanian. English is taught in the schools, and 86% of the Danish people are at least semi-proficient in Danish.

Our Unabridged Danish dictionary contains over 80,000 terms with definitions in Danish. We also publish a smaller Danish / English dictionary with 11,000 terms and a Danish / English phrasebook.