Not knowing how to talk about numbers can create significant challenges when you’re trying out a new language. It makes it harder to order food, shop for clothes, find your way around, tell time and more. That’s why it’s crucial to learn numbers early on in your language studies. Counting in Danish is a bit more challenging than in other languages, so we’ve prepared a quick guide to help you memorize and pronounce Danish numbers. Happy counting!
Counting From Zero To Twenty In Danish
Starting with the basics, here’s how to count from zero to twenty. Press the play button to hear how the numbers are pronounced.
zero — nul
one — en (common), et (neuter)
two — to
three — tre
four — fire
five — fem
six — seks
seven — syv
eight — otte
nine — ni
ten — ti
eleven — elleve
twelve — tolv
thirteen — tretten
fourteen — fjorten
fifteen — femten
sixteen — seksten
seventeen — sytten
eighteen — atten
nineteen — nitten
twenty — tyve
The Rest Of The Tens
Counting in Danish can be a bit tricky, and here’s where things start to get a little unusual. You’ll basically just need to memorize the tens, and then in the next section, we’ll fill in the numbers in between.
thirty — tredive
forty — fyrre
fifty — halvtreds
sixty — tres
seventy — halvfjerds
eighty — firs
ninety — halvfems
one hundred — hundrede
Putting It All Together
Now that you have all the building blocks, let’s make some numbers! All you have to do is take the ones and add them to the tens, with the word og (“and”) in between. And make it all one word. For example, 22 is toogtyve, or to (“two”) + og (“and”) + tyve (“20”). This literally translates to “two and twenty.” If you want to write 54, it’s fireoghalvtreds (lit. “four and fifty”), or fire (“four”) + og (“and”) + halvtreds (“fifty”). Make sense?