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AlOlaf Danskdeutsch Challenge Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5845 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes  1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 73 of 74 18 April 2016 at 6:05pm | IP Logged | ||
Ja, det gar fint med min dansk, men ogsa min norsk lyder lidt dansk. Det kommer, fordi jeg taler for sjaeldent norsk. Fasulye 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| AlOlaf Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5146 days ago 491 posts - 617 votes Speaks: English*, GermanC2 Studies: Danish | Message 74 of 74 30 May 2016 at 3:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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Embarrassment can be a great motivator. I went to Denmark two years ago and had a wonderful time trying to speak Danish, for the most part successfully, but the memory of one awkward incident stayed with me: At a sausage stand in Copenhagen, I had ordered something in Danish and was feeling pretty inconspicuous and native when the man handed me my food and asked me something I didn't understand. The silence that ensued as I groped in vain for the Danish equivalent of "Sorry, I didn't catch that." caused a nearby patron to turn around. The guy, who looked vaguely like the actor who plays Sven Åge Saltum on "Borgen", saw the apparently familiar expression of a perplexed tourist on my face and smirked knowingly. The sausage man shrugged, chuckled and told me how much I owed him, so, embarrassed, I paid and left without ever finding out what it was he had asked me.
Now, this may not seem like a big deal, but it affected me to the extent that my desire to prevent something similar from happening again is proving to be a great source of learning motivation for me. Not that I think I can learn enough to guarantee I won't ever not know what somebody is saying to me in a foreign language. I'll be going back to Denmark in less than three months, and I'm quite certain I'll get into some kind of embarrassing situation(s) where I don't know what's going on, but I figure I can decrease the likelihood and/or severity if I study hard. In the end, though, if I want to have a proper adventure, I know I've got to follow a simple credo that completely goes against my self-conscious, introverted nature: Dare to look stupid. I got some new Danish TV shows on DVD, and right now I'm watching a series called "Hotellet" from around 2000. The Danish subtitles are excellent, and I'm learning lots of new words. I also got three seasons of the more recent (and excellent) "Badehotellet". The first two seasons have English subtitles, so I'm watching them with my monoglot girlfriend, who is thankfully no longer distracted by the "bizarre" sound of the language. I also got two seasons of "Dicte" with Danish subtitles yet to watch, and I'm waiting with great anticipation for the complete boxed set of "Huset på Christianshavn", also with Danish subtitles, to arrive. I downloaded quite a few episodes of "Huset" off the Internet some time back, but they don't have subtitles, and I've been having a bitch of a time understanding some of the dialogue. In the meantime, I condensed over 15 hours of repeat-after practice recordings down to about 3 1/2 hours of sentences and phrases containing the words I'm having the most trouble pronouncing. After more than three years of study, you'd think by now I'd be able to correctly pronounce common words like "glad" (happy) and "værelse" (room), but I can't. Edited by AlOlaf on 30 May 2016 at 7:21pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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