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AlOlaf Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5145 days ago 491 posts - 617 votes Speaks: English*, GermanC2 Studies: Danish
| Message 41 of 74 30 September 2015 at 6:02am | IP Logged |
Week 23
I regret insinuating that learning to speak Danish is akin to being dragged around like a rag doll and pummeled crapless. That was an exaggeration. Danish is a delightful language. There's absolutely nothing intrinsically malevolent about it, and it has never, to my knowledge, inflicted bodily injury on anyone. And just because a book entitled "Convincingly Danish-sounding Native English Speakers I Have Known" would likely be the thinnest volume ever written, it doesn't necessarily follow that learning to speak Danish is any harder for an adult Anglophone than, say, solving a Rubik's Cube blindfolded or riding a Cape buffalo.
Yesterday I got some swell new DVD documentary boxed sets from Denmark. There's one about the German occupation during WWII, one about Copenhagen, one about Jutland, one about life on the farm, one about industry and a single DVD about Århus. None have subtitles, but I don't suppose that'll hurt me any. I've watched the first disc from the one about the occupation, and there's tons of historical footage I've never seen before. I can't understand all the narration, but I think I'm getting most of it. I also got Klovn: The Movie. It has English subtitles, so I'll wait and watch that with my girlfriend. She likes Danish entertainment almost as much as I do.
I had to work on Saturday, and my cat developed some weird bladder problem on Sunday, so I got very little recording done. Hopefully I'll do better next week.
Hours recorded in the last week, with total hours in parentheses:
Danish: 3.5 (151.3)
German: 0 (10.2)
Combined hours to date: 161.5
1 person has voted this message useful
| AlOlaf Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5145 days ago 491 posts - 617 votes Speaks: English*, GermanC2 Studies: Danish
| Message 42 of 74 07 October 2015 at 5:49pm | IP Logged |
Week 24
I checked my online debit card statement last week, and it looked like the Danish company I got my new DVDs from was trying to charge me for them three times. This proved not to be the case, but finding that out for sure necessitated a bit of real-life target language communication.
I used a form on the company's website to send them two emails. When I sent the first, I didn't have the invoice numbers in question, so I had to send this follow-up the next day:
Hej, det ser ud til, at beløbet er ved at blive trukket fra mit kreditkort tre gange. Jeg har sendt en mail til jer i går den 30.09.15, men dengang havde jeg ikke frakturanumrene. Dem har jeg nu. Jeg håber, at I kan rette fejlen.
And here's the response:
Hej Allen
Vi kan kun se beløbet er blevet trukket en gang fra din konto, måske de andre to bare er reservationer fordi vi ikke har kunne hæve beløbet på din konto de gange vi har forsøgt? :)
Beløbet er i hvert fald blevet trukket på din konto, og bliver ikke trukket mere end én gang.
Med venlig hilsen
Winnie
Wow. A smiley emoticon from a customer service person. These Danes must be fine folks.
Hours recorded in the last week, with total hours in parentheses:
Danish: 8.6 (159.9)
German: 0 (10.2)
Combined hours to date: 170.1
1 person has voted this message useful
| AlOlaf Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5145 days ago 491 posts - 617 votes Speaks: English*, GermanC2 Studies: Danish
| Message 43 of 74 25 October 2015 at 5:26pm | IP Logged |
Serious concerns in real life have brought my challenge to a standstill. I had planned to make a video at the end of the year to see if I'd made progress in Danish, but the situation could get worse, so I'm doing it now.
Video
3 persons have voted this message useful
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Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6700 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map
| Message 44 of 74 26 October 2015 at 2:08pm | IP Logged |
Congratulations. Your Danish is excellent. Of course I can hear that you have some other background, but I wouldn't be able to guess that your native language is English - the diphtongs that give away most Anglophones when they speak any other language are not a problem for you. The only thing I noticed which could be pushed a bit further is your r-sound - you say it slightly closer to the middle of the mouth than we do.
By the way, I ate "øllebrød" in my childhood, but wouldn't touch the stuff now. And "højt belagt smørrebrød" is something neither I nor my family have ever fancied - some Danes do, but most of the time we just eat our "rugbrød" with one or two things on top of the butter or whatever other spread they use - things like cheese (ordinary or melted), ham, sliced sausace, marmelade or 'salads' of some kind. Most Danes also eat a nasty thing called "leverpostej", but even the thought of that produce would make me loose my appetite.
3 persons have voted this message useful
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jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6906 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map
| Message 45 of 74 26 October 2015 at 6:51pm | IP Logged |
Wow, impressive. Iversen can judge your accent better than I, but to me you sound Danish (and not like somebody who happens to utter words from the Danish language in the right order). Well done.
Edited by jeff_lindqvist on 27 October 2015 at 7:13pm
2 persons have voted this message useful
| AlOlaf Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5145 days ago 491 posts - 617 votes Speaks: English*, GermanC2 Studies: Danish
| Message 46 of 74 26 October 2015 at 10:39pm | IP Logged |
@Iversen and jeff_lindqvist:
I really appreciate your feedback. I'll start paying more attention to my r sounds.
1 person has voted this message useful
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Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5844 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 47 of 74 28 October 2015 at 5:12pm | IP Logged |
Hej AlOlaf,
Tak for videoen! Det lyder virkeligt dansk. Du taler hurtigt, så kan jeg ikke forstå så
godt, men udtalen lyder fin.
Fasulye
1 person has voted this message useful
| AlOlaf Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5145 days ago 491 posts - 617 votes Speaks: English*, GermanC2 Studies: Danish
| Message 48 of 74 29 October 2015 at 7:33pm | IP Logged |
Mange tak, Fasulye! Jeg er meget glad for, at du kan lide den.
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