From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Kingdom of Denmark has only one official language, Danish, the national language of the Danish people, but there are several minority languages spoken through the territory. These include German, Faroese, and Greenlandic. A large majority of Danes also speak English as a second language.

Official minority languages

German

South Jutland, where German is official.

German is an official minority language in South Jutland County (in Region Syddanmark), which was part of Imperial Germany prior the Treaty of Versailles. Between 15,000 and 20,000 Ethnic Germans live in South Jutland, of whom roughly 8,000 use either the standard German or the Schleswigsch variety of Low Saxon in daily communications. Schleswigisch is highly divergent from Standard German and can be quite difficult to understand by Standard German speakers. Outside of South Jutland, the members of St. Peter's Church in Copenhagen use German in their Church, its website, and the school that it runs.[1]

Faroese

Faroese-language postage stamps.

Faroese, a North Germanic language like Danish, is the primary language of the Faroe Islands, a self-governing territory of the Kingdom. It is also spoken by some Faroese immigrants to mainland Denmark. It is quite similar to Danish as spoken several hundred years ago.

Greenlandic

Greenlandic is the main language of the 54,000 Inuit living in Greenland, which is, like the Faroes, a self-governing territory of Denmark. Roughly 7,000 people speak Greenlandic on the Danish mainland.

References

• Ethnologue report for Denmark
• German in Denmark