Days Of The Week, Months Of The Year, Seasons, Weather, And Time In Danish
It’s always best practice to learn key vocabulary in a new language before moving on to more difficult concepts. When we say “key”, we generally mean words and phrases you’ll encounter frequently in conversation. If you’re more likely to use a word, it’s also more likely that you’ll remember it.
This applies to Danish as well. And when it comes to essential vocabulary, it doesn’t get much more essential than words related to the passage of time. It’s important to know how to describe when something occurs because being able to do so makes all the difference in the message you’re trying to convey.
In this article, we’ve got pretty much all the “time terms” you’ll need to get started with Danish. These include the usuals: days, months, and seasons, plus weather vocabulary, as this goes hand-in-hand with time.
You’ll find everything separated into convenient categories, so you can focus on the areas that are most relevant to you.
Days of the Week in Danish
First things first, we’ll introduce you to the seven days of the week. Some of the Danish names will look similar to their English counterparts, so remembering them shouldn’t be too much of a challenge for you.
| Days of the Week (English) | Ugens dage / Ugedage (Danish) |
|---|---|
| What’s the day today? | Hvad er dagen i dag? |
| Monday | Mandag |
| Tuesday | Tirsdag |
| Wednesday | Onsdag |
| Thursday | Torsdag |
| Friday | Fredag |
| Saturday | Lørdag |
| Sunday | Søndag |
Months of the Year in Danish
Next up, let’s take a look at the twelve months of the year. If you thought the days of the week looked familiar, wait until you see these! Some of them are spelled (and pronounced) exactly the same as their English counterparts.
| Months of the Year (English) | Årets Måneder (Danish) |
|---|---|
| January | Januar |
| February | Februar |
| March | Marts |
| April | April |
| May | Maj |
| June | Juni |
| July | Juli |
| August | August |
| September | September |
| October | October |
| November | November |
| December | December |
Seasons in Danish
Now we’ll introduce you to the four seasons. A couple will be familiar.
| Seasons (English) | Årstider (Danish) |
|---|---|
| Spring | (et) Forår |
| Summer | (en) Sommer |
| Autumn (Fall) | (et) Efterår |
| Winter | (en) Vinter |
The Weather in Danish
We thought that you’d also want to learn some weather terms surrounding the change of seasons, so we’ve included the most common ones here.
| The Weather (English) | Vejret (Danish) |
|---|---|
| Rain | Regn |
| Snow | Sne |
| Sun | Sol |
| Wind | Vind |
| Clouds | Skyer |
| Fog | Tåge |
| Lightning | Lyn |
| Thunder | Torden |
| Storm | Storm |
| Hot | Varm |
| Cold | Kold |
Time in Danish
In this section, we’ll go over some common time-related words and phrases in Danish. Here, we mean time in its most abstract sense, when words act as both nouns and adverbs, encompassing words like “minute”, “day”, “tomorrow”, etc.
| Time (English) | Tid (Danish) |
|---|---|
| morning | (en) morgen |
| afternoon | (en) eftermiddag |
| evening | (en) aften |
| night | nat |
| midnight | midnat |
| dusk | skumring |
| dawn | dæmring |
| second | (et) sekund |
| minute | (et) minut |
| hour | (en) time |
| day | dag |
| week | (en) uge |
| weekend | (en) weekend |
| month | (en) måned |
| year | (et) år |
| decade | (et) årti |
| century | (et) århundred(e) |
| today | i dag |
| yesterday | i går |
| tomorrow | i morgen |
| tonight | i aften |
| late | sent |
| early | tidligt |
| now | nu |
| soon | snart |
Telling the Time in Danish
The previous section dealt with time in a very general sense. This section will focus on the actual process of telling time, using numbers and specific hours of the day.
Depending on the language, this topic has the potential to be one of the more complex aspects of language learning. We’re pleased to say, however, that telling the time in Danish is a breeze! We already touched on this subject briefly in Numbers and Counting in Danish, but let’s take a deeper look.
You would use “Klokken er x” to say “It is x o’clock”, “x” being the hour between 1-12.
Danish is similar to German in that, if you want to say half past the hour, you’d apply the half to the coming hour, not the current one. So, if it’s currently 5:30, you’d write this as “half six”, which is “halv sex” in Danish.
If you want to talk about minutes to the hour, you’d say the minutes, use the Danish word “i”, then finish off with the coming hour. Check out the example below:
- 4:47 (13 minutes to 5): “Tretten minutter i fem”.
On the other hand, if you want to talk about minutes past the hour, you’d start with the minutes, use the Danish word “over” (which needs no explanation), ending with the hour:
- 3:18 (18 minutes past 3): “Atten minutter over tre”.
Below, you’ll notice that “a quarter” has its own word, as it does in English when telling the time.
| What’s the time? | Hvad er klokken? |
|---|---|
| [It’s] three o’clock | Klokken er tre |
| [It’s] six-thirty | Klokken er halv syv |
| Quarter to eight | Kvart i otte |
| Quarter past five | Kvart over fem |
| Twenty to four | Tyve minutter i fire |
We hope this article has been useful to you, and that you feel a little bit more confident tackling the subject of time in Danish.
The great thing about Danish, as you’ve no doubt noticed, is that a lot of the time-related words are very similar to their English counterparts. This makes learning them a whole lot easier!
Of course, there’s always more to learn, and we encourage you to keep studying. The more you practice, the better you’ll get.
In the meantime, why not check out some more Danish vocabulary? Learn some Body Parts and Clothing words in Danish. Or if you don’t feel like studying, you might be interested in checking out our list of the top Danish-language Bands and Artists.
