Why are we so confused?

Having woken up from another dazzlingly late night weekend, we arrived at Danish classes for another week. We were learning dates. The '2nd' is 'anden'. How do you pronounce that? Well, explains the teacher, you drop the 'd' because it is after an 'n'. You drop the 'e' because it is before an 'n'. Therefore you just say 'an'. Makes sense I suppose.