Flawless American accent on the part of Danish Speakers

Every native Danish speaker that I have encountered speak flawless English, with virtually no trace of an accent at all. Could it be that the phonologies of the two languages are incredibly similar?

If not, I want to commend Denmark on their excellent English program in public schools.

Although I have heard Danes with really thick accents, it is probably true that Danish phonology is closer to English than you might think.
Danish phonology for example has ð, something all the other Continental Germanic languages have lost.

Yes, and no offense at all to you Fredrik, but the Norwegians I have met do tend to have a stronger accent when speaking English than the Danes do.

How many Norwegians have you met, and does that number justify a prejudice on your side on 4,6 million people?

All Danish speakers I know pronounced LIES as LICE and EYES like ICE.
They don't seem to have learned the -s rule.
All final -s' should be voiced [z] unless preceeded by [p,k,s,t]

« All final -s' should be voiced [z] unless preceeded by [p,k,s,t] »

Not necessarily. I'm a native English speaker from England and I don't really distinguish between 'lies' and 'lice', or between 'eyes' and 'ice'.

In American English, the 's' in 'eyes' would be pronounced more like a 'z', as in (ay-zz).

<<How many Norwegians have you met, and does that number justify a prejudice on your side on 4,6 million people?>>

First of all, it's not a prejudice, and there's nothing wrong with having a thicker accent. And secondly, I was just speaking of the Norweigans I met personally. I didn't say anything about the whole country of Norway. But to answer your question, I have met several Norwiegans. For some reason there are a lot of Scandanavian foreign exchange students in the U.S.

My experiences over the past two weeks(last week in Denmark, this week in Norway) tells me different, really. The accents are different, but they're both there.

> Not necessarily. I'm a native English speaker from England and I don't really distinguish between 'lies' and 'lice', or between 'eyes' and 'ice'.

Where abouts in England are you from? I've never come across anyone here who pronounces those words like that. This final consonant devoicing seems to be common to many Germanic languages.

I'm actually from Birmingham although I don't have a Birmingham accent. I usually assume that I speak RP although I'm often told that I have a rather strange accent (people sometimes think I'm from South Africa, for some reason).

This was not written by me, but by somebody using my name:

"How many Norwegians have you met, and does that number justify a prejudice on your side on 4,6 million people? "

Norwegian and Swedish have the two tone system, which makes us sound really sing-song in English.
Danes have only one tone, like English. They have the stød, but that probably sounds less sing-song than tones.

> I'm actually from Birmingham although I don't have a Birmingham accent. I usually assume that I speak RP although I'm often told that I have a rather strange accent (people sometimes think I'm from South Africa, for some reason).

Well I never. Perhaps it is the final consonant devoicing that does it? Afrikaans always devoices final consonants, so for example D at the end of a word sounds like T, B sounds like P and S is never voiced wherever it occurrs.

Incidentally, although I'm white, my mum was originally from Uganda since her parents had been living there for about 10 years when she was born. My grandmother tells me that people sometimes ask her if she's from Australia or South Africa... I don't really know whether that would have anything to do with it or not though.

Danes sound like shit when they speak English. You can tell a Dane when they can't prounounce Philly Cheese Steak in York. They are also the most racist mo' fo's in the world. They treat their a-rabs like shie -yte.