Danish counting begins exactly as you would expect and then, somewhere around fifty, does something that surprises every learner: it switches from base ten to base twenty. This page maps out the whole system — cardinals, teens, tens, ordinals, fractions, dates, money — so you know what is coming and, crucially, where the difficulty actually lives. The short version: 1 to 49 are easy, and 50 to 99 are the hardest counting system in Europe.
The honest preview
Most of the Danish number system is regular and learnable in an afternoon. The famous obstacle is narrow but real: the tens from 50 to 90 are not built on a "five-tens, six-tens" pattern the way English (fifty, sixty) and German (fünfzig, sechzig) are. They are built on multiples of twenty — a leftover from an old Norse counting habit called the vigesimal system.
Cardinals 0 to 12
The smallest numbers are simply memorised, just as in English. Here are zero through twelve.
| Numeral | Danish |
|---|---|
| 0 | nul |
| 1 | en / et |
| 2 | to |
| 3 | tre |
| 4 | fire |
| 5 | fem |
| 6 | seks |
| 7 | syv |
| 8 | otte |
| 9 | ni |
| 10 | ti |
| 11 | elleve |
| 12 | tolv |
Notice that 1 has two forms, en and et. This is the only number that changes shape depending on the noun it counts, because it matches Danish grammatical gender — exactly like the indefinite article. We treat this fully on the cardinals 0–20 page.
Jeg har to børn og en hund.
I have two children and a dog.
Klokken er tolv.
It's twelve o'clock.
The teens
From 13 to 19, Danish forms compounds much like English "thir-teen, four-teen" — the smaller digit comes first, then a -ten element (-ten, related to ti "ten").
| Numeral | Danish |
|---|---|
| 13 | tretten |
| 14 | fjorten |
| 15 | femten |
| 16 | seksten |
| 17 | sytten |
| 18 | atten |
| 19 | nitten |
| 20 | tyve |
A pronunciation warning for one of these: seksten (16) is not pronounced the way it is spelled. The middle -ks- is silent, so it sounds roughly like "SAJS-ten," rhyming with the start of English "size." This trap, and the full 0–20 list, lives on the cardinals 0–20 page.
Min datter fylder seksten år i morgen.
My daughter turns sixteen tomorrow.
The tens — where it breaks
Here is the whole reason this overview exists. Look at the tens and watch what happens after forty.
| Numeral | Danish | Type |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | ti | simple |
| 20 | tyve | simple |
| 30 | tredive | simple |
| 40 | fyrre | simple |
| 50 | halvtreds | vigesimal |
| 60 | tres | vigesimal |
| 70 | halvfjerds | vigesimal |
| 80 | firs | vigesimal |
| 90 | halvfems | vigesimal |
From 10 to 40 the words are simple, freestanding tens. But 50 is halvtreds — and that word is secretly counting in twenties. Tres (60) is short for tre-sinds-tyve, literally "three times twenty" (3 × 20 = 60). Firs (80) is "four times twenty" (4 × 20 = 80). And the halv- words use a half-step: halvtreds (50) comes from halvtredje-sinds-tyve, "half-third times twenty" — two and a half twenties — which is 2.5 × 20 = 50.
You do not need to derive these in conversation — native speakers don't. You memorise halvtreds, tres, halvfjerds, firs, halvfems as five fixed words. But knowing why they look strange makes them stick.
Min farmor bliver halvfems til sommer.
My grandmother turns ninety this summer.
Der var omkring tres mennesker til festen.
There were around sixty people at the party.
Building larger numbers
Above 20, compound numbers reverse the English order — the unit comes before the ten, joined by og ("and"), exactly as in German. So 21 is enogtyve (literally "one-and-twenty") and 55 is femoghalvtreds ("five-and-fifty"). The full mechanics are on the compound cardinals page.
Hun er fireogtyve år gammel.
She is twenty-four years old.
Bogen koster femoghalvtreds kroner.
The book costs fifty-five kroner.
Beyond cardinals
The number system reaches into several other areas you will meet early, each with its own page:
- Ordinals (first, second, third) — første, anden, tredje, fjerde, used for dates, floors, and ranking. See ordinals.
- Fractions — en halv (a half), en tredjedel (a third), en kvart (a quarter).
- Dates and clock time — Danish tells time around the hour in a way English speakers find counter-intuitive (halv tre means 2:30, "half on the way to three," not 3:30). See dates and time.
- Money — prices in kroner and øre, where the vigesimal tens show up constantly.
Den fjerde maj er en vigtig dag i Danmark.
The fourth of May is an important day in Denmark.
Vi mødes klokken halv tre.
We're meeting at half past two (2:30).
Common mistakes
❌ Min mor er femti år.
Incorrect — *femti* is Norwegian/Swedish for 50, not Danish.
✅ Min mor er halvtreds år.
My mother is fifty years old.
Danish learners who have seen Norwegian or Swedish often import the decimal-style femti, seksti, sytti. These are wrong in Danish — Danish uses the vigesimal halvtreds, tres, halvfjerds.
❌ Han er sytti år gammel.
Incorrect — *sytti* doesn't exist in Danish; this looks like a guessed decimal form.
✅ Han er halvfjerds år gammel.
He is seventy years old.
❌ Jeg har en barn.
Incorrect — *barn* is a neuter (*et*) noun, so 'one' must be *et*.
✅ Jeg har et barn.
I have one child.
The word for "one" agrees with the noun's gender. Treating it as a fixed en is the most common early number error, and it is covered in detail on the cardinals 0–20 page.
❌ Klokken er halv tre — så den er 3:30.
Incorrect reasoning — Danish *halv tre* means 2:30, not 3:30.
✅ Klokken er halv tre — den er 2:30.
It's half past two — it's 2:30.
Key takeaways
- Numbers 0–49 are straightforward: a few memorised words plus the unit + og + ten compound pattern.
- The tens 50–90 (halvtreds, tres, halvfjerds, firs, halvfems) are vigesimal — multiples of twenty — and must be learned as fixed words. Do not expect a decimal pattern.
- En/et for "one" agrees with noun gender; it is the only number that inflects.
- Once cardinals are solid, ordinals, fractions, clock time, and money each add a small, self-contained layer.
Now practice Danish
Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.
Start learning Danish→Related Topics
- Cardinal Numbers 0-20A1 — The Danish numbers from zero to twenty, including the two forms of 'one' and the spelling traps in seksten and otte.
- The Tens and the Vigesimal System (50-90)A2 — Danish counts its tens from 50 to 90 on base twenty: halvtreds (2½×20), tres (3×20), halvfjerds, firs, halvfems. Decode the halv- prefix and the full historical -sindstyve forms — and why there's no femti.
- Compound Numbers and HundredsA2 — Building Danish numbers 21–99 with units before tens joined by og and written as one word, plus hundrede, tusind and million, and how Danish formats thousands and decimals.
- Ordinal NumbersA2 — Danish ordinals from første to tiende and beyond — the suppletive low forms, the regular -ende/-te pattern, the anden/andet gender agreement, and how ordinals are written with a period and used in dates.
- Dates, Time and MoneyA2 — Telling the time in Danish (including the half-hour trap where halv ti means 9:30), reading dates with ordinals, saying years, and handling kroner and øre.
- Grammatical Gender: En-words vs Et-wordsA1 — Danish has two genders — common (en-words) and neuter (et-words). Gender is mostly unpredictable, must be learned with each noun, and controls articles, definite suffixes, adjectives, and pronouns.