Originally posted by runem https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/4287094
Hello hopeful students!
In this post I'm going to talk a bit about the Danish alphabets, what sounds the different letters might produce, and some general guidelines to pronunciation.
The Danish alphabet has 29 letters. The 26 you already know from English, along with three extra vowels tagged onto the end. Sing with me:
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z æ ø å
Uppercase of the three extra vowels: Æ Ø Å.
Vowels;
The vowels are: a e i o u y æ ø å.
You might think, hey, this is a bunch of vowels! And you'd be right. But in fact there are even more. Sorry! These vowel letters represent 2-4 distinguishable sounds each, leaving Danish with a flourishing 30-odd vowel sounds --- and that's without counting dialects.
Please do not despair at the immensity of vowel sounds! Depending on which language you come from, it might take you a bit of effort to learn to pronounce (and hear) these sounds, but it is definitely possible. I've personally watched my fiancée learn to do it 
She's Italian, a language which has around 6 vowel sounds. So if an Italian can do it, you can too!
The upside to the high number of vowels is that Danish in general has very short words. And you do not need to learn to pronounce these vowels perfectly, or even near perfect, to be understood -- people will understand from the context.
Notice that Y is a vowel in Danish, not a consonant! Excepted from this are, of course, any loan words that have kept their foreign spelling, such as the ever present and highly delicious yoghurt.
Another important point about vowels in Danish is that they're "true" or "flat" vowels, which means that they have a single sound only. This is different from English, where vowels "glide" into another sound. Think of the English vowel a: To a Dane, this sounds like a+i. An example of a true vowel in English is the ee of see -- To a Dane, this sound is simply that of i.
A would love to give you an overview of the sounds of the vowels, but it is simply not possible to describe most of them using English vowels as examples. Instead, there is a short series about Danish pronunciation, in which the first two videos deal with vowels:
Another video comes from a great series about how to pronounce Danish, which is unfortunately in Danish. See if it won't be of use anyway:
Vowel Modification:
A double consonant or two consonants after a vowel (in the same syllable) makes the preceding vowel short. Otherwise the vowel is long.
An R after a vowel (in the same syllable) is not pronounced, but instead serves to open up the vowel. See videos about vowels above.
Stød or Glottal Stop
Danish has the feature called "stød", which is really hard to describe. It is the difference between, for instance, mor (mother) and mord (murder). Wikipedia has an article on stød.
Having scoured Youtube for pronunciation examples, I can only seem to find these two, which are in Danish. See them as advanced training, maybe
Although stød is sometimes referred to as glottal stop, it is not the same as the glottal stop found in, say, a downtown London accent or Scottish English. Depending on your language of origin, this might be a tough one to get down -- again, be comforted by the fact that most often the context will let people understand you in any case.
<h1>Consonants</h1>
Rejoice! Consonants in Danish are mostly the same as in English. A few notes:
R is pronounced in the throat. Sort of like in French, or like J in Spanish. You'll have fun learning this one. Imagine you have something stuck in your throat, but try not to overdo it. It's rather subtle
Remember that it is not pronounced if it occurs after a vowel, in the same syllable.The combination ng works the same as in English. Think of sing in English.
T is very aired in Danish, meaning you blow out more air while saying it.
D can be soft or hard. As a rule of thumb, it is hard (like do) before vowels and soft (like the) immediately after vowels. It can be a bit complicated to decide whether a d inside a word is "before" or "after" a vowel: You have to divide the word into syllables. If it follows another consonant like l or n it shortens the preceding vowel and generally introduces stød (if that vowel is the first in the word). See below. After a g it is generally not pronounced.
J is pronounced like the English consonant-Y (as in yogurt). Except in loan words.
The combination dj makes the English j sound (as in juice).
The combination tj makes the English ch sound (as in chess).
G can be soft (like Danish J) or hard (like English geese). Like D, it is most often soft after vowels and hard before vowels.
H is silent before other consonants
F after A makes a diphthong similar to aw in awful (but with a slightly different a). In the word af (of) it is simply not pronounced.
Two Ks in a row sound the same as two Gs in a row (less aired than single K).
Two Ts in a row sound the same as two hard Ds in a row (less aired than single T).
Take a look at the third part of the series from above, which is about consonants: How To Speak Danish | Pronunciation 3: Consonants
Unused Consonants
The consonants Q, W, X, and Z are not really used at all, except for loan words. In these they retain their original sound, although Z is pronounced the same as S and W might be pronounced as V (such as in weekend, pronounced like English but with a v at the start). C is the same, except it occurs in many personal names, too. It can be pronounced as either an S (often before a vowel) or a K (often before another consonant)
<h1>Pronunciation Exceptions</h1>
-et at the end of a word is pronounced with a soft-d sound instead of the t.
Useful Resources;
Forvo - Search for a word and listen to a native speaker say it.
Wiktionary (the English version) has most Danish words with IPA pronunciation, etymology, conjugations, and often a translation too.
IVONA This is the TTS voice we're using. Select Danish -> Mads (for male) or Naja (for female) and input any text you want to listen to again.
Google Translate Can read out in Danish too.
Dansk Udtale on YouTube has videos on different areas of the pronunciation (explained in Danish, though).
N 
C1 
B2 
B1 
A1