Should I learn Danish or Norwegian?

[Maxine]

I have to learn a language in 6 months for something. I don't have to be completely fluent in it, just get to a reasonable level. I'm hesitating between Danish and Norwegian, can anyone give me any advice on which one I should learn?
I already speak French, English, German and am learning Spanish, Latin and Ancient Greek (which aren't really used but oh well... they're pretty interesting). I really want to learn a language that is close to German/English (as I have to learn a fair amount in 6 months), but which is not too close (i.e. Dutch, because I don't want to get it mixed up with German as I'm only just about fluent in German, it's not my mother tongue...). I thought that a Scandinavian language would probably be best, and have narrowed it down to Norwegian (I think that there is Bokmål and Nynorsk, so I'll be hesitating between those two as well...) and Danish.
I really need help, as this is unbelievably important!

[Emma Mason]

Go with Icelandic.

[Miharu]

Norwegian.
As a matter fo fact, Noewegian comes in two versions, which are both official and written and spoken languages, but in your school, you won't have to worry, you learrn one version of it and be done with it.
the nice thing about Norwegian is that the relationship between spelling and pronunciation is straighforward - once you've learned the basich differences between English and Norwegian spelling.

Danish,
on the other hand, has a spelling/pronunciation relationship that is similarly errratic and unpredictable as in English, so while in Norwegian an "a" is always pronounced as "a", in Danish it can be either "a" like in "father" or like in "man", and apart from that, parts of words are written but not pronounced (like often in French)..... so Norwegian is much more straightforward.

Grammarwise they are very similar anyway, and once you've got the hang of one language, you can easily read the other, in great parts even understand when you hear it, that's how close the are.

[Ingeborg]

Norwegian, Bokmål is the easiest and most used form. It is also closer to German than Danish but not to close.

[Louie the linguist]

Norwegian is a great language to learn for (at least) these reasons

1. Fascinating historical development, including development of nynorsk.
2. Dialects are encouraged and rich
3. Great literature, much of which is not translated
4. Nobel peace prize is given out from Norway
5. primary source material in many fields like equality, social justice, human rights etc etc
6. a relatively easy in to Swedish (Swedish SOUNDS like Norwegian) and Danish (Danish LOOKS like Norwegian)
7. It sets you apart from the masses who have studied other languages (so our graduates tell us when they are out on the job market)


Decide what your motivations are, your access to resources, your goals (since many Norwegian are almost perfect in English, travel isn't all that important).

[zirp]

How many hours do you have?

According to the US Foreign Service Institute, you can learn Esperanto in "150 hours", and norwegian or danish in "575-600 hours"

I agree with Miharu that norwegian is probably easier to pronounce than danish (glottal stop,spelling)