Two separate northern European countries that are not neighbours — Germany sits between them. Denmark speaks Danish, a North Germanic language related to Norwegian and Swedish. The Netherlands speaks Dutch, a West Germanic language closer to English and German. The confusion is largely the similarity of "Danish" and "Dutch" in English.
The core difference
- Denmark — Scandinavian, language Danish, capital Copenhagen. Danes call it Danmark.
- Netherlands — a Low Country, language Dutch, capital Amsterdam. The Dutch call it Nederland.
They do not share a border. Germany lies between them, and Denmark is the only Scandinavian country attached to the European mainland.
Why the names get mixed up
Danish and Dutch both begin with a D and both name small, prosperous, flat, cycling-heavy countries near the North Sea. That is about where the similarity ends: the words are unrelated. Dutch traces to the Germanic word behind Deutsch; Danish comes from the name of the Danes.
The languages are in different branches
- Danish — North Germanic, alongside Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic and Faroese. Danes, Norwegians and Swedes can often understand one another in writing.
- Dutch — West Germanic, alongside German, English, Frisian and Afrikaans.
So a Dutch speaker is closer to a German speaker than to a Dane, despite the map suggesting otherwise.
The things named after each
A Danish pastry is named for Denmark, though Danes call it wienerbrød — "Viennese bread" — because the technique came from Austrian bakers. Dutch appears in a long list of English phrases, many of them originally insults from periods of Anglo-Dutch rivalry: going Dutch, Dutch courage, double Dutch.
