Danish Food for Beginners

If you love good food, chances are you will like Denmark. Especially Copenhagen is a hub of creative restaurants, but the idyllic restaurants in the countryside also have a lot to offer.

 

Today we will not be talking about restaurants in Denmark but just about food. I hope to introduce you to some simple Danish words relating to food so that you can get started talking more about food.

 

I’ve put together a combination of pictures and words to introduce you to vegetables, fruits, drinks, dinner, breakfast, and cutlery all in Danish. 

Vegetables in Danish (Grøntsager)

images of vegetables with Danish text 1

When I started writing this, I thought it would be a piece of cake, however what I realised, is that a lot (a lot) of food items in Danish are uncountable, or they always appear in multiples, such as ærter. I have tried my best to either write the article in a parenthesis before the word if it is uncountable, or to add the plural suffix in a parenthesis if it always or almost always appears in plural form. 

In the above, I think the most notable is blomkål (cauliflower). It is not really countable, and so you almost always refer to either “en buket blomkål (a bouquet of cauliflower)” or et blomkålshoved (a head of cauliflower). 

Let’s look at some more vegetables.  

images of vegetables with Danish text 2

Again here, broccoli is counted as a bouquet and, well, you almost never talk about just one bean, so I have added the plural suffix -r. Rødkål is also not countable in its own right, so I have written the article (en) in parenthesis.

 

Drinks in Danish (Drikkevarer)

Images of drinks with danish text

Here we have a lot of uncountables. In informal speech you might use “en kaffe”, but really it is because you are omitting the verb “kop” (mug) which is countable. The same goes for “te”. Rødvin and hvidvin are not countable in their own right, but we can count them by referring to a number of “flasker” (bottles) instead. Milk is really not countable either, but you quite often see it counted still. In reality you are omitting “karton” (carton) or something similar that is countable again. 

 

Fruits in Danish (Frugter)

Images of fruits in Danish

Fruits are mostly countable it appears. The one thing to be aware of in this image is the slight mismatch in the first image.  “Vandmelon” (watermelon) as is written refers to the whole watermelon, whereas if you talk about a slice (as shown in the image) then you call it “en skive vandmelon”. 

 

 

Dinners in Danish (Aftensmad)

Images of Dinners with Danish text

This is just a very small selection of what one might eat for dinner. I would love to include more traditional Danish meals, but I could not exactly find illustrations of those to add to these images. I have included pasta, hotdog, and pizza to show how some words have been taken from other languages. 

 

Breakfast in Danish (Morgenmad)

Images of breakfast items in Danish

A list of common breakfast items you might encounter if you eat breakfast in Denmark. It really is no different than most other places. The biggest difference is maybe our preference for oats and oatmeal. I eat oats myself almost every day. 

 

Cutlery in Danish (Bestik)

Images of cutlery in Danish

I think the main thing that might be tricky here is the word “kop” which refers to a mug and not a cup as one might think.

 

That’s all I had for now. If you want, you can download all the images as a nice PDF here or all the words as Anki flashcards here

 

 

 

 

 

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Comments

5 Comments

5 Comments

  1. Eleanor Southgate

    Hej!

    Jeg lærer stadig dansk, så jeg håber, at mit dansk er ok!

    Jeg fandt for nylig din podcast på Spotify, og jeg vil gerne sige, podcasten og transkriptionen er meget nyttige til mig! På podcaster til danskere, de taler for hurtigt for mig, men du taler med den perfekte hastighed. Transktiptionen hjælper mig også til at følge med. Mange tak fordi du lavede dem!

    Jeg håber du har en dejlig dag/aften.

    – Eleanor

    Reply
    • Rasmus

      Hej Eleanor,

      Mange tak for din kommentar! Vi er så glade for at høre at du kan lide vores arbejde. Vi lover at vi fortsætter arbejdet med podcasten meget snart. Der er sket en masse i vores liv her henover sommeren, men det er kommentarer som din som holder os kørende.

      VI håber du vil lytte med i fremtiden og vi håber også at du har en dejlig dag/aften.

      – Antonina & Rasmus

      Reply
  2. Norbert

    Hi, as Eleanor has stated: Your Podcast is great
    and very useful. Episodes can be shorter but please, keep them coming.

    Mange tak for denen gode idé
    Norbert

    Reply
  3. Adam

    Hej,
    Jeg ville skrive mere eller mindre det samme som Eleanor 🙂 Jeg har prøvet at finde nogen podcast, hvis jeg kunne forstå, men først nu tror jeg at jeg forstår mere end halvdelen af hvad du (eller andre) siger. Og det er virkelig motiverende.
    Tusind tak og jeg ønsker dig en masse styrke i forberedelse af fremtidlige episoder!
    Adam

    Reply
    • Rasmus

      Hej Adam,

      Mange tak for din besked. Det er altid super rart at høre at folk kan bruge det vi laver. Vi har desværre ikke så meget tid som vi gerne ville have til at lave episoder, men vi lover at vi bliver ved med at lave episoder, selvom det går lidt langsomt. Tak fordi du lytter med.
      Rasmus

      Reply

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