I don’t know if there’s a standard best way of learning a new language, other than immersion. I’ve tried French and Spanish so far, and although I can read both languages well enough to navigate French and Spanish countries, I’m nowhere close to fluent. So I can’t tell you what the most effective learning method is, but I’m guessing it doesn’t matter that much as long as you practice a lot.
Therefore, the best method is one that you can do every day without dying of impatience or boredom.
For learning Danish, I’ve looked at some podcasts like this one – Copenhagencast. I didn’t like that one much. The lady speaks so slowly that I get bored waiting for her to get to the next word. I’m doing this in the morning over coffee on my way to work, so my attention span is good for about 20 minutes tops. When I went looking for a lesson that would get moving a little quicker, I found this, One Minute Danish Lessons. The title is a lie – the lessons are three or four minutes long, and they waste the first thirty seconds of each episode with some stupid music and an explanation of the one-minute-lesson concept. It’s the same explanation every time. I really didn’t need to hear it more than once. I haven’t gotten to the end of one of those lessons yet, even though they are only three or four minutes.
I’ve got some comic books and kids stories to read as well, but I’m not even at that level yet. Looking up every word is difficult when you’ve got a coffee cup in one hand.
These aren’t complaints. Learning Danish is hard work, there’s no way around that. But I only want to do the language learning work, not get distracted by things like coffee cups and stupid music. So this is just looking for the path forward.
This might be a start: SpeakDanish. You can play each short phrase of a conversation over and over again, fast and slow, with the Danish text and English text right next to each other. This won’t be enough on it’s own, I don’t think. I’ll probably have to write the phrases down as well to stick them in my mind. But I can play the phrases while I’m eating breakfast. Now to find out if I can get my job to pay for the license fee.
Also – here’s the section about swearing. It’s free, enjoy!