Ah, Danish pronunciation. It is no secret that the Danish language has many challenging sounds, and there are many different ways to pronounce one and the same letter. This is true for pretty much all the letters of the alphabet – but when it comes to vowels, the a sound might just be the one that gives Danish learners the most headaches.
So in this post, we will give you some helpful rules to follow when it comes to how to pronounce a in Danish!
Front or back, long or short? The main variations of a
Let’s get the boring, theoretical part out of the way first. There are two main ways in which the pronunciation of a can differ.
- It can be pronounced as a front vowel or as a back vowel.
- It can be long or short.
What in the world does that mean? Let’s break it down:
If an a is pronounced in the front, and it is short, that means it sounds a lot like the a in the English word “cat”. In this case, the phonetic letter for it is [a]. You can find this sound in the danish word for “cat”, which is kat.
If a is pronounced in the front, but it is long, it is pronounced a little bit “lighter”: It sounds a little bit more like the a in the English word “able”. The phonetic letter for it is [a:] – so basically the same as the short one, except that there is a colon (:) to show the long pronunciation. An example of this sound is the Danish word for “monkey”, which is abe.
Right. Now, what about a as a back vowel? This one sounds a lot like the “a” in the English word “father”; it can also be long or short, but fortunately, you don’t have to change the quality of the vowel like you did with the “front a“. The phonetic letters for the back a are [𝛼] (short) and [𝛼:] (long). A Danish word with a short [𝛼] is tak, which means “thanks”. A long [𝛼:] can be found in far, which is the Danish word for “father”.
How to pronounce a in Danish: Safe bets and rules of thumb
And now, for the fun part: actually pronouncing words!
How do you know when to use which sound? The bad news is that it’s a bit complicated. But the good news is that there are some cases where you can be pretty sure that the a sound is pronounced a certain way.
Let’s start with the ultimate foolproof rule. The a is always pronounced as a back vowel ([𝛼] or [𝛼:], like father), when…
- there is an r before or after the a
| kraft | power |
| arbejde | work |
| rar | nice |
And then there are some rules that you can follow with some certainty, but there are a bunch of exceptions. Depending on the vowel that comes after the a, you can guess if it’s a front or a back vowel.
We can say that the a is usually pronounced as a back vowel, if…
- the letter after the a is f, k, or p,
| kaffe | coffee |
| tak | thanks |
| slap af! | calm down! |
- the a is followed by the consonant combinations ng, nk, or mp
| mange | many |
| bank | bank |
| lampe | lamp |
On the other hand, a is usually pronounced as a front vowel ([a] or [a:]), if:
- the letter after the a is d, l, n, s or t
| glad | happy |
| male | paint |
| svane | swan |
| glas | glass |
| kat | cat |
- nothing follows the a, so it is at the end of the word
| sofa | sofa |
| Anna | Anna (name) |
You might be wondering “what about the rest of the consonants and consonant combinations”? With letters like g, b, v, and pretty much everything else, it really depends on the specific case – and explaining all the possible cases would make this blog post infinitely long 😄
But there are some very commonly used words where you’d expect a front vowel when looking at the surrounding letters, but the a is actually pronounced as a back vowel. These can be good to know for everyday conversations, so here they are:
| aldrig | never |
| anderledes | different |
| andre | other(s) |
| Anders | Anders (name) |
Note here that anderledes and andre have a back vowel, even though words like and (“Duck”) or anden (“2nd”/”the other” … and yes, this one means “the duck” as well) are pronounced with a front a.
Time for a fun fact – the famous cartoon character Donald Duck is called Anders And (“Anders Duck”) in Danish. And based on what we learned in the last few paragraphs, what does that mean? That’s right. Both in Anders and in And, we have a followed by n – but still, the two a‘s are pronounced differently (the first a is a front vowel and the second a is a back vowel)…
The many faces of the danish a sound
Phew. That’s a lot of information. We’ve also looked at a bunch of exceptions already – and unfortunately, we can’t cover all of them.
But one thing is for sure: even if Danish pronunciation is difficult to get the hang of in the beginning, it will all come with practice! And even though the rules above don’t cover every a there is, they will help you tackle many of the a‘s you will encounter!
Still confused? Watch Swap Language teacher Vigdis explain the rules about how to pronounce a in Danish in this online lesson!
