Symbols
75Click a symbol to copy it and open its page.
Danish alphabet
The 29 letters in Danish order, capital and small: A to Z, then Æ, Ø and Å after Z. é is not a separate letter; it is the e of idé, allé and én and sorts with e.
Quotation marks
Danish guillemets point inward: »quote« and ›quote inside a quote‹. „Low-high“ marks are also correct, and ”…” or “…” also turn up online. ’ is also the apostrophe of Lars’ bil.
Currency
The Danish krone (also used in the Faroe Islands and Greenland) has no sign of its own: write 49,95 kr. or DKK 49,95. The euro is the currency of the Danish minority in Germany.
Where it's spoken
Denmark first; then the Danish minority of Southern Schleswig in Germany, the Faroe Islands, where Danish is official beside Faroese, and Greenland, where it is widely used beside Greenlandic.
Danish in emoji
The candle of hygge, the Danish word for cosy togetherness that English borrowed.
On the map
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The Danish alphabet: 29 letters from A to Å
The Danish alphabet has 29 letters: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Æ Ø Å. The three extra letters are full letters of their own, not A and O with decorations, and they come after Z in exactly this order. A Danish dictionary ends with words like æble (apple), øl (beer) and år (year), and a name like Ågesen is sorted after Zimmermann.
C, Q, W, X and Z turn up mostly in names and borrowed words (computer, quiz, weekend, taxa, zoo); native Danish words use K and S instead. Norwegian uses the same 29 letters in the same order, so a Dane and a Norwegian can share a keyboard of letters, while Swedish has Å, Ä, Ö in a different order and German writes ä and ö where Danish has æ and ø. Their collections, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic and German, are linked from this page.
Æ, Ø and Å: what each Danish letter does
Æ æ grew out of a joined a and e. It writes an open e sound, close to the vowel in English bed or longer as in air: æble (apple), æg (egg), læge (doctor), kærlighed (love). It keeps words apart: læge is a doctor, lege means to play.
Ø ø, the o with a slash, is the rounded vowel that German writes ö and French writes eu, as in peu: øl (beer), rød (red), smørrebrød, København. On its own, ø is a word meaning island. for (for) and før (before) are different words.
Å å, the a with a ring, sounds roughly like the vowel of British English saw: på (on), år (year), blå (blue), gå (walk). Alone, å means a small river or stream. Before 1948 Danish wrote this sound as aa; the spelling reform of that year brought in å, at the same time as it ended the old habit of capitalising every noun. Many place and family names kept the old spelling: Aalborg, Aabenraa, Aagaard. Aarhus even switched back from Århus in 2011. In alphabetical order, the aa of such names is sorted as å, at the end.
The acute accent: é in idé, allé and én
The acute accent is optional in Danish, and no word requires one. é can mark stress on a final e, as in idé (idea), allé (avenue), armé (army) and entré (entrance hall).
The accent may mark stress or distinguish the numeral én/ét from the articles en/et, but en and et can also mean one without the accent. Der var én fejl says there was one single mistake, not just a mistake. Other diacritics can be retained in borrowed expressions, as in à la carte; letters such as ü or ö may appear in foreign names.
How to type Danish letters on an English keyboard
On Windows, hold Alt and type the code on the number pad: Alt0198 Æ, Alt0230 æ, Alt0216 Ø, Alt0248 ø, Alt0197 Å, Alt0229 å, Alt0233 é, Alt0187 » and Alt0171 «. With the US-International layout it is quicker: right AltZ gives æ, right AltL gives ø and right AltW gives å (add Shift for the capitals). In Microsoft Word, CtrlShift& then a gives æ, Ctrl/ then o gives ø, and CtrlShift@ then a gives å.
On a Mac with a US or British layout, Option' types æ, OptionO types ø and OptionA types å; hold Shift as well for Æ, Ø and Å. OptionE and then E gives é, OptionShift\ gives » and Option\ gives «. On an iPhone or Android phone, hold down A to choose å or æ, O for ø and E for é. In HTML, write æ, ø and å (capital: Æ, Ø, Å).
A Danish keyboard has its own keys for the three letters: Æ and Ø to the right of L, Å to the right of P. When there is truly no way to type them, the accepted fallbacks are ae, oe and aa: Koebenhavn, aeble, paa. Do not use a look-alike for Ø: (empty set) and (diameter sign) are different characters, and search and spell-checkers will not read them as the letter.
Danish quotation marks and punctuation
Printed Danish traditionally quotes with guillemets that point inward, »like this«, the opposite of French « this »; a quote inside a quote uses single ones, ›like this‹. Low-high marks „like this“ are also correct, and online you will also see ” ” or English-style “ ”.
The apostrophe ’ is rarer than in English. Danish normally forms the possessive with -s (Peters bil, Peter's car); words ending in s, x or z, as well as certain abbreviations, numbers and symbols, take an apostrophe: Lars’ bil, Max’ cykel. Numbers use a comma for decimals and a dot for thousands, so 1.234,50 kr. is a price.
Denmark, the Faroe Islands and Greenland pay in kroner, written kr. or DKK, with no special sign. The euro sign belongs to the Danish minority in Southern Schleswig in Germany, where Danish has official recognition as a minority language.
Where Danish is spoken
CLDR estimates 5.6 million literate, functional Danish users in Denmark . South of the border, the Danish minority in Southern Schleswig runs its own Danish schools and newspaper.
In the Faroe Islands , Danish is an official language beside Faroese and is taught in every school; in Greenland , Greenlandic is the official language and Danish is still widely used in administration, education and business. Icelanders learn Danish at school as well, a reminder of the centuries when Iceland was ruled from Copenhagen. Each of these places has its own collection: Denmark, Germany, Faroe Islands, Greenland and Iceland.
How to use them
6 situationsClick to copyDanish Letters Æ Ø Å combos
12Worth knowing
- Å only became a Danish letter in 1948. Before that the sound was written aa, which is why Aalborg and Aabenraa still look the way they do, and why Aarhus went back from Århus to its old spelling in 2011.
- The same 1948 reform stopped Danish from capitalising all nouns, a habit German still keeps.
- Ø and Å are complete Danish words: ø means island and å means a small river.
- Danish and Norwegian keyboards carry the same three letters but swap two of them: Danish has Æ then Ø to the right of L, Norwegian Ø then Æ.
Questions people ask
7How many letters are in the Danish alphabet?
29: the 26 letters A to Z, then Æ, Ø and Å, always in that order at the end. É is used in some words but counts as an e, not a separate letter.
What are the Danish special characters?
Æ æ, Ø ø and Å å, plus é in words like idé, allé and én. Danish also uses the quotation marks » « and › ‹ (pointing inward) and „ “.
How do you type ø on an English keyboard?
On Windows hold Alt and type 0248 on the number pad (0216 for Ø), or use right AltL with the US-International layout. On a Mac press OptionO (OptionShiftO for Ø). On a phone, hold down the O key.
What is the Danish o with a slash called?
It is the letter ø, in English often called 'o with stroke' or 'slashed o'. It sounds like German ö and is its own letter in Danish and Norwegian, sorted after æ and before å.
How do you type æ and å on a laptop?
Windows: Alt0230 for æ and Alt0229 for å with a number pad, or right AltZ and right AltW with US-International. Mac: Option' for æ and OptionA for å. Or copy them from this page.
What is the difference between Danish ø and Swedish ö?
They write the same sound. Danish and Norwegian use ø, Swedish, Finnish, German and Icelandic use ö. Danish æ likewise matches Swedish ä.
Why do some Danish names use aa instead of å?
Danish wrote aa until the 1948 spelling reform introduced å. Many towns and families kept aa, as in Aalborg or Aagaard, and Danish sorts that aa as å, at the end of the alphabet.
