Foreign Languages in Denmark in the Future: Recommendations

25/08/2026 by Red.

In June, the National Centre for Foreign Languages (NCFF) published its latest report on the future of foreign language education in Denmark. At a time when learning languages in one’s spare time – through evening classes or apps such as Duolingo – has never been more popular, interest in studying languages within the formal education system continues to decline. Lingoblog was invited to bring the recommendations here. The full report (in Danish) can be accessed here.

System and Structure

Foreign language education faces deep-rooted structural challenges across the Danish education system. Student enrollment is falling, fewer pupils choose languages, and access to language education is becoming increasingly limited. At the same time, Denmark faces a growing shortage of qualified language … ↪

To buy a pig in a poke – a Danish-German language collaboration on fixed expressions

18/09/2025 by Erla Hallsteinsdottir og Irene Simonsen

Have you ever “bought a pig in a poke”?
If you speak Danish (at købe katten i sækken) or German (die Katze im Sack kaufen), you might already know this phrase. If not, you are about to discover why idioms and fixed expressions are so fascinating – and why they matter for communication across languages.

Share your favorite expressions with the project here.

The project

Knowing and being able to use each other’s language is one of the most important prerequisites for a well-functioning community. For the Danish-German border region, this applies in particular, since knowledge and command of the neighbor’s language cannot be taken for granted. German faces difficult conditions in Denmark, while Danish as … ↪

Mr. Love and Mrs. Liberty: Does grammatical gender influence personification in abstract concepts?

01/10/2024 by Otis Arnevik Lilley

What is grammatical gender?

Grammatical gender is a fascinating feature of language. Not every language utilizes it, and those that do, might not necessarily agree on noun classification systems or assignment of gender to nouns. For example, English has no grammatical gender, Spanish utilizes a masculine-feminine dichotomy, and German has an additional neuter gender. Apart from categorization of biological gender, such as “the man; the father” (Spanish: el hombre, el padre; German: der Mann, der Vater) or “the woman; the mother” (Spanish: la mujer, la madre; German: die Frau, die Mutter), grammatical gender is seemingly arbitrary. This means that various non-human, inanimate objects are assigned a gender, without any logical reason. The categorizations are random, as different languages sometimes assign … ↪

Call for applications: take part in the 14th edition of Liet International, the competition for songs in minority languages in Bastia, Corsica!

25/04/2024 by Liet International

You can read a Danish version of the article here, a French version here and a Corsican version here.

On Friday 22nd of November 2024, Bastia will host the 14th edition of Liet International, the European minority language song contest for singers and bands who sing in a European regional or minority language, created in 2002. After thirteen previous editions in Friesland (The Netherlands), Sápmi (Sweden), Brittany/Breizh (France), Udin/Udine (Italy), Xixón/Gijón (Spain), Oldenburg (northern part of Germany), Guovdageaidnu/Kautokeino (Norway), Ljouwert/Leeuwarden (Friesland, the Netherlands) and Tønder/Tondern (Denmark), Liet International will visit Corsica for the first time.

ViaStella, the local TV network, branch of France Télévisions, in charge of the live broadcast of the show in Centru Culturale Alb’Oru. For … ↪

NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL LINGUISTIC CHRISTMAS

21/12/2023 by Maria Jørgensen

It’s Christmas-time again – and what would this time of year be without Christmas music? A lot of us start counting the days ’till Christmas from the moment “Last Christmas” surprises us in a shopping center sometime around November 20^th– and let’s just admit it: We can’t get enough of Christmas songs!

Or maybe Christmas music just isn’t your thing. Is it really possible to listen to ”All I Want for Christmas is You” throughout December without losing your mind, you might be thinking. I mean, I’d say it is, but… I get it. You need something new – something different! I’ve dug around on the internet and asked Twitter for help, and now I’m happy to present … ↪

Report from Liet International 2022 – Corsican victory and almost a Danish-language winner

03/07/202418/05/2022 by Søren Sandager Sørensen

The music competition Liet International is specific to minority and regional languages. In the time before I became a linguistics student, I heard about it through the then-existing Sprogmuseum, and I remember finding the topic very interesting. Back then I did not expect that over 10 years later I would get the opportunity to be among the live audience – when in took place in Denmark, Tønder, on Friday 13th of May 2022, right between the semifinals and grand final of another song contest. I went there together with three other participants in Lingoslam.

At Liet International, there were 13 artists, each with one track. None of the participants sang in English, but they represented one language (or more) … ↪

How do learners make use of foreign language learning materials?

26/06/202316/06/2020 by Nathalie Schümchen

How do learners make use of foreign language learning materials? This was the question that I set out to answer in my ph.d. thesis. Along the way, I learned to use to methods for evaluating usability of a product (think-aloud protocols and constructive interaction), learned how to analyze the results quantitatively (which was scary), and found new ways to look at the data qualitatively (conversation analysis). Especially through detailed qualitative analyses of how our study participants made use of the learning materials in our usability test settings, I learned more about the sequential organization of such sessions, how instructions are realized, and how different visual and other aspects of the learning material drafts were made relevant.

In this blog post, … ↪