SimonTheBeetle:
A question totally off the topic, but just can't resist...
How close are the German and Danish languages?
Can you guys understand each other just speaking your own?
iirc, danish is a north germanic while german is a west germanic language (like english or dutch), so there are languages german has more similarities with. i'm not an expert, but from my trips to denmark i can tell you that the written language has quite a few similarities and words that are recognizable if you speak german (if you know the context of what you are trying to read), but phonetically the languages differ greatly. so while i can understand a lot of what a dutch person is saying without ever opening a dutch language guide, no chance with someone from denmark in that regard.