The exercises I am doing are using spaced repetition tools for vocabulary and listening, using textbooks for fine-tuning grammar and pronunciation, and as a writing exercise that's more fun than translating fourteen-thousand different variations on 'the red cat ate a quick mouse', I have just begun attempting to translate the classic children's novel Moonfleet into Danish.
Some good resources:
Spaced Repetition
* Duolingo
* Anki - there are Danish decks readily available online
Textbooks
* Danish: An Essential Grammar (excellent, but too dense for
younger kids)
* På vej til dansk (listening exercises, accessible to all)
Websites
* ordnet.dk: excellent online Danish dictionary - I find the phonetic transcriptions invaluable - while they may be inaccessible to younger children anyone can benefit from the plentiful audio snippets. I use this [1] greasemonkey script to help easily download the audio clips when they are particularly helpful, for example as exemplars of particular vowels.
* Wiktionary: A reasonable source of translations for Danish. A good accompaniment to Den Danske Ordbog. The IPA transcriptions don't tend to be quite as good as the ordbog though and there are some surprising gaps.
* Google Translate: Useful as a starting point, although I don't treat it as authoritative.
Misc
* Radio - DR P6 Beat - I'm only able to understand the odd word but I still find this useful for getting to grips with the sound of spoken Danish. Also they play pretty good music (although in case anyone from P6 Beat is reading, the correct number of times to play 'Brimful of Asha (Fatboy Slim Remix)' in a day is not 3).
* Reddit - /r/Denmark - I use this as an accessible font of colloquial Danish.
* Twitter - I follow Danish journalists for the sports I enjoy (Grand Prix racing and road cycling) to get repeated exposure to small fragments of Danish through the day.
Good luck! This is more effort than most European immigrants put in.
You will probably need a native speaker to help your pronunciation, especially for the 42 vowels, and the soft D, and stød.
For my first year studying Danish in Denmark, I could only speak "foreigner Danish" -- the bad accent that, somehow, other foreigners seem to understand (perhaps because we have a limited vocabulary) but which causes Danes to look confused, and repeat what they said in English.
Thanks for the encouragement. I think my soft d is pretty good but I'm definitely a beginner with regards to the vowels and the stød. It's all part of the challenge, though :-)
Awesome list, looks like you're making a real effort. Tough language to learn, mainly because the range of correctness seems quite narrow. English by constrast seems to have a huge range.
I think it corresponds to the number of non-native speakers. English speakers are used to hearing people from every corner of the globe speak our language, so we are pretty unfazed by an accent. Danes - like, I think, most speakers of languages that remain largely isolated to their land of origin, have no such exposure - and thus tolerance - to accented speech.
In my experience, most professional immigrants to Denmark have more trouble learning Danish than they would if they'd moved to Sweden or Norway instead.
Before I moved to Denmark, an hour with a Swede plus reading the back of Lonely Planet taught me enough Swedish reading and pronunciation to order food in the airport in Swedish. Danish takes weeks or months of exposure to get an ear for the language, plus more weeks/months of practise to be understood.
It's certainly possible; I know adults from all over Europe whose can speak Danish from reasonably to very well. It does take more effort and more motivation than elsewhere.
(I wrote professional, since this is based on a typical situation of a couple of hours of Danish class a week, plus homework. I can't compare children, other workers, refugees etc, as their situation is so different.)
That's interesting to hear. I must admit I am at least a little bit attracted to the challenge of learning a language that's known for being difficult, though of course the vast majority of what attracts me towards Denmark (over other Nordic and European nations) is lifestyle and political factors.
Some good resources:
Spaced Repetition
* Duolingo
* Anki - there are Danish decks readily available online
Textbooks
* Danish: An Essential Grammar (excellent, but too dense for younger kids)
* På vej til dansk (listening exercises, accessible to all)
Websites
* ordnet.dk: excellent online Danish dictionary - I find the phonetic transcriptions invaluable - while they may be inaccessible to younger children anyone can benefit from the plentiful audio snippets. I use this [1] greasemonkey script to help easily download the audio clips when they are particularly helpful, for example as exemplars of particular vowels.
* Wiktionary: A reasonable source of translations for Danish. A good accompaniment to Den Danske Ordbog. The IPA transcriptions don't tend to be quite as good as the ordbog though and there are some surprising gaps.
* Google Translate: Useful as a starting point, although I don't treat it as authoritative.
Misc
* Radio - DR P6 Beat - I'm only able to understand the odd word but I still find this useful for getting to grips with the sound of spoken Danish. Also they play pretty good music (although in case anyone from P6 Beat is reading, the correct number of times to play 'Brimful of Asha (Fatboy Slim Remix)' in a day is not 3).
* Reddit - /r/Denmark - I use this as an accessible font of colloquial Danish.
* Twitter - I follow Danish journalists for the sports I enjoy (Grand Prix racing and road cycling) to get repeated exposure to small fragments of Danish through the day.
Hope this helps :-)
[1] https://pastebin.com/raw/LygwA6bN