WThe German letter w is pronounced like an English ‘v’.
An example is the word ‘yes’ which translates to ‘Ja’ in both German and Danish (although they sound different both start with a y sound). Similarly, the Danish letter j is often also pronounced like an English ‘y’ (except in loanwords). JThe German letter j is pronounced like an English ‘y’. VIn many German words the letter v is pronounced like an English ‘f’ sound.įor example, the German word “Vogel” and the Danish word “fugl” (both translate to “bird”) are closer in pronunciation than in spelling. In German and in Danish, there are some letters which are pronounced differently from the way they are pronounced in English: In German all nouns are capitalized, this is not the case in Danish.ĭanish vs. German has different rules for capitalization than Danish. So this consonant shift amounts to adding an s sound after the t sound. The German letter z is generally pronounced ‘ts’. Some Danish and German vocabulary words which illustrate the (t→z) consonant shift : English Some Danish and German vocabulary words which illustrate the (k→ch) consonant shift : English Some Danish and German vocabulary words which illustrate the (d→t) consonant shift : English The following tables present Danish and German vocabulary words side by side which illustrate these consonant shifts. Vocabulary similarities between Danish and German Three of the main high German consonant shifts are the following: These consonant shifts occurred in German but not in the other Germanic languages like Danish, English, Dutch, etc. Between the 3rd and the 8th century there were a series of pronunciation changes which occurred in the German language.
Many of these patterns reflect a linguistic phenomenon called the high German consonant shift. The small differences between these similar vocabulary words are not random: there are noticeable patterns. Danish and German: How similar are these languages?ĭanish and German are both Germanic languages which means that they both originate from a common ancestor language which linguists refer to as the Proto-Germanic language.īecause of this common ancestry, Danish and German share a number of similar vocabulary words.
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