<p>Anyone know for sure any colleges that offer Danish? I have a Danish background so I think I would enjoy taking a class in this language (I have also visited family in Denmark twice and loved it)</p>
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<p>I ran a search for you. Courses are taught at Brigham Young, NYU, UMass, U Minnesota, U Oregon, UC Berkeley, Portland State…</p>
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<p>UT-Austin also offers Danish.</p>
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<p>UW-Madison as part of their Scandinavian Studies department.</p>
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<p>Danish has many vowel sounds - quite a few more than written Danish would have you think, and there are many silent letters. In Danish, there is a big difference between what you write, and what you actually say. In other words, there is not much correlation between sound and letter. In this respect, Danish is a very difficult language to learn. This means that students need to learn to see a word as it is written, and yet at the same time learn a completely different sound image. In addition to this, Danish also has a unique sound phenomenon called the glottal stop, which can be difficult to achieve. The glottal stop is something that makes Danish especially characteristic in relation to other languages. There are regional dialects in parts of Denmark, including southern Jutland, Lolland and Falster, among other places, which don’t have the glottal stop at all! The Danish word order in the main and subordinate clause can often be difficult for foreigners. The Nordic languages, as with German, are unique in having what is called “reversed word order”, that is, the verb before the noun. You can also say that the verb is always in place number two in the main clause.
A major problem for foreigners attempting to speak Danish is relatively few non-native speakers actually know the language, so the Danes have only heard foreign attempts at speaking Danish for the last 30 years or so. In other words, a foreigner’s Danish must be quite good before a native speaker can recognize it as Danish. In English-speaking countries, be contrast, where people are used to hearing English spoken in strange ways by people from all over the world, the tolerance levels are much higher. But if you’re really interested, keep at it, you’ll get it. And I agree with you: Denmark is one of the world’s best kept secrets. What a GREAT country and people.</p>