It has been announced that international visitors to Copengagen and residents are to get more accessible news services from public service broadcaster DR and the City Council. DR previously provided foreign language news on its website, as well as the daily News in English broadcast. Low audience ratings forced the radio broadcast off the air in 2001, while budget cuts led to the end of the on-line service in 2006.
Prompted by parliament, the broadcaster will now present the news in the six most common foreign languages in Denmark. Initially, it will offer a selection of DR stories translated daily into English, Bosnian, Turkish, Arabic, Urdu and Somali for international readers on the DR website and text television service.
DR Online editor Nicolai Porsbo said the new service also allowed the broadcaster to fulfill its public service obligation. “DR is for the whole population and we will reach a lot of people who are interested in following the news here, but who often experience a language barrier,” Porsbo told Politiken newspaper.
(Source: Copenhagen Post)
on Aug 27th, 2009 at 13:23
DR might have given up on English-language radio from Denmark, but there is still “Copenhagen Calling” broadcast for example via WRN (http://www.wrn.org/listeners/stations/station.php?StationID=11)
I wonder what the influence of the City Council will be on the content of the DR service.
on Aug 27th, 2009 at 13:46
The description of what DR is planning to do sounds very similar to what the newspaper Politiken already does at http://politiken.dk/newsinenglish : several stories a day in English about Denmark.
on Aug 27th, 2009 at 13:56
Indeed it is, and the full article mentions this, but I shortened the story as we restrict coverage in this blog to broadcasters. The original article is at http://www.cphpost.dk/news/national/88-national/46706-tuning-in-to-hear-the-danish-news-in-english.html
on Aug 27th, 2009 at 16:03
And the web address is ?
on Aug 27th, 2009 at 16:06
Nice and simple - http://www.dr.dk
I will link it for you.
on Aug 27th, 2009 at 23:51
Wow, that sure is a motley group of “the six most common foreign languages in Denmark“ — are those really ahead of German, Norwegian, Swedish, French…? Says who?
on Aug 28th, 2009 at 05:57
As a speculation, Glenn:
I should say especially in the case of German, Norwegian and Swedish, there is probably not so very much difficulty in getting access to information about Denmark in those languages, and these countries (being neighbours) have a long history together. Germany for example has a Danish-speaking minority. It\’s quite another thing, I would guess to find coverage in Somali or Urdu about Denmark.
Probably you would say the same goes for English as for German, but perhaps they have taken the decision that English likely to be the most common second language after an endless number of first languages. They can\’t possibly cover all the first languages, perhaps they have decided on English as a good compromise.
But perhaps that the explanation of why they chose those languages, not why someone decided to call them the six most common foreign languages in Denmark…
on Aug 28th, 2009 at 06:05
perhaps Denmark is more “ethnically diverse” (for want of a better phrase) than one might expect. The CIA lists the “ethnic groups” of the country as
“Scandinavian, Inuit, Faroese, German, Turkish, Iranian, Somali”
(https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/da.html)
Perhaps also being a small country, in raw terms it doesn’t take so many numbers to become seen as an “ethnic group”
on Aug 28th, 2009 at 09:32
When I lived in Denmark from 1978-87, there were Mon-Fri news bulletins in English, French and German on the third radio network at 0815-0830. The problem was that they were ‘rip and read’ bulletins compiled and read by freelance journalists who came in and took the main stories from the newswires in the respective languages. But it was mostly international news - I remember one foggy morning when there were traffic advisories in Danish, but not a mention in the English news.
The new service will be news about Denmark rather than international news. And the stories will be translated from the ones written by DR’s own journalists, so there will be a consistency of style and content that was missing from the old radio bulletins.
on Aug 28th, 2009 at 22:34
Concerning the question whether these are really “the six most common foreign languages in Denmark“: In a hurry I find that about 70,000 Turks, about 14,000 Iraqis and about 19,000 Pakistanis live in Denmark. For comparison: The number of ethnic Germans in Denmark is being quoted as somewhere between 12,000 and 20,000.
If you find this surprising: About 1.7 million Turks live in Germany. This community dwarfes any “official” ethnic minority, like the less than 50,000 Danes.
on Aug 29th, 2009 at 02:35
Kai, I believe Germany accepted about 2 million ethnic Germans and almost 200,000 Jewish immigrants - all from the former Soviet Union. The vast majority of them speak Russian as their mother tongue.
on Aug 29th, 2009 at 09:19
Two million “late evacuees”, as they are officially called? But no surprise, lots of them live here, and people just refer to them as “the Russians”. Here a definition of “ethnic German” is in play that comes close to being racist. In practice it is worth nothing, and for these people Germany usually becomes quite a disappointment.