Danish is the state language of Denmark and the second official language in the Faroese Islands (next to Faroese) and in Greenland (next to Inuit/Greenlandic).
Danish belongs to the North-Germanic group of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. Together with Swedish it forms the East-Scandinavian branch.
Danish is spoken in Denmark by circa 5 million mother tongue speakers. The other mother tongue speakers can be found in Greenland and the Faroese Islands (both belonging politically to Denmark), the region of South-Schleswig in Germany, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, furthermore also in Canada and the USA. According to estimations there are around 50,000 people living in Schleswig-Holstein (South-Schleswig) who belong to the Danish minority and who have German citizenship.
A particularity of Danish is that it has many different dialects, which are difficult to comprehend, even for mother tongue speakers of Danish. The Danish dialects can be divided into so-called Rigsdansk (i.e. the highbrow language standard), the dialect of Bornholm and the dialects from the North, West and South of Jutland. The dialect of Sønderjysk is widely spoken in the southern part of Jutland. Many people who belong to the Danish minority in Germany speak Sydslesvigsk, a mixed language based on a direct translation from German into Danish without changing syntax. Sydslesvigsk is also regarded as a separate dialect of Danish.
Danes in Germany (50.000 Speaker)
Denmark (5.069.000 Speaker)