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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6647 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 9 of 97 23 July 2007 at 6:49am | IP Logged | ||||||||
"en grøn mark", "et grønt hus", "to grønne huse" (after indefinit article or numbers or nothing: different forms in accordance with the gender and number of the substantive). "den grønne mark, det grønne hus, de grønne huse" (always -e after definite article, except with a few adjectives that end in a vowel, like blå, sky) Note that "(det) gröna huset" is possible in Swedish, but absolutely not in Danish. "Den, det, de" are articles AND demonstrative pronouns (as "denne, dette, disse"), and "der" can also be seen as a demonstrative (as "her"). The relative pronouns are "der" or "som" or - in some cases - nothing, without any difference in meaning. If there already is a demonstrative "der" in the subordinate phrase you would try to avoid using the relative "der", and likewise you would avoid "som" in phrases with a comparison with totally different* "som" used as a conjunction. You can often skip the relative altogether, after almost the same rules as in English. * There may historically be a connection between the two "der"s and the two "som"s, but that's irrelevant here.
What an elegant way of saying it!
"At vide": with "noget/en masse/lidt om" + substantive: an area of knowledge with a subordinate phrase ("om, had, hvordan, hvorfor.."): a skill or a fact, dependent on which kind of subordinate you choose Note that you can say "jeg ved en masse om penge", but not "jeg ved en masse penge" - though one Danish song contains the weird passage "Jeg ved en lærkerede" ("I know a lark's nest"). Some authors just hate to follow the rules. By the way, "at vide" does not have to be in the beginning of a phrase ("Ved nærmere eftertanke kunne jeg godt tænke mig at vide, hvor du har den opfattelse fra. Jeg kender ikke den regel") "At kunne": With an infinitive ("Jeg kan bøje latinske verber"): a skill With a substantival object("jeg kan min grammatik på fingrene"): an area of knowledge "At kende": to know someone or something "At kende" mostly takes substantival objects, but you can say "jeg kender til at" + infinitive, meaning "I know how to...". Edited by Iversen on 23 July 2007 at 7:51am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| burntgorilla Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6388 days ago 202 posts - 206 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Danish | Message 10 of 97 24 July 2007 at 12:14pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thank you for the explanations there, I'll try and take them on board. Right now I'm pressing on to the end of the TY course, but I think afterwards I will do a bit of consolidating and make sure I understand the basics well, and learn some of the essential vocab.
I did unit 14 today, which was about a meal in a restaurant and toasts and things. It listed a couple of different ways of saying "I like" which I'll go over soon. I wasn't in a particular good mood today, which didn't really help the whole learning thing. Since my short term aim is to write a letter, I had better find some opportunities to practice that skill. Some of the exercises in my book require me to write a bit, but in truth I don't do them because they're so tedious. My dictionary could take a while to arrive, and I'm nearing the end of the TY course, so I'll need to find things to fill in the time with. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| burntgorilla Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6388 days ago 202 posts - 206 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Danish | Message 11 of 97 25 July 2007 at 2:03pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Unit 15 today, more or less. I'm skipping some of the more lengthy exercises and skimming slightly over the dialogs. This is obviously bad, so I think I'll try and figure out a different approach for the last couple of units. That said, they don't seem to introduce anything really important, so I won't worry too much. Today the main thing was the passive voice, which seems simple enough. It mentioned that there is the form ending in "s", but didn't actually explain how to form it - I'm assuming you just put an "s" on the end of the stem? As far as I can tell it's only really used in the present, and I can use the "blive + past participle" construction instead for the other tenses. Is that correct? I judged the grammar book too hastily, I think. I looked up the section on word order, and was completely bamboozled. I was expecting something like "it is normally SVO except when..." but instead I got big tables with lots of different letters that I didn't understand. I'll try and read through it more methodically and see what I learn. So far I've only really browsed through certain topics.
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| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6647 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 12 of 97 25 July 2007 at 7:18pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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The past tense version of the passive (or rather reflexive) is not uncommon, but only with transitive weak verbs. You form the present version from stem + -es, but the past version from the preterite + s . Among the strong verbs the past passive/reflexive is normally missing. However both strong and weak transitive verbs can form the corresponding synthetic form with "blive".
weak verbs (those with the past or preterite on "-de" (or in some cases "-te")): to turn = "dreje" (stem = "drej") Present: jeg drejer, passive: jeg drejes - jeg bliver drejet Past: jeg drejede, passive: jeg drejedes - jeg blev drejet at skabe = "skabe" (stem "skab") Present: jeg skaber, passive: jeg skabes - jeg bliver skabt (said by Adam?) Past: jeg skabte, passive: jeg skabtes - jeg blev skabt --- Strong verbs (those without an ending in the preterite), the first two without a passive/reflexive: to shoot = "skyde" (stem = "skyd") Present: jeg skyder, passive: jeg skydes - jeg bliver skudt Past: jeg skød, passive: (missing) - jeg blev skudt (note the vowels y - ø - u) to sting = "stikke" (stem "stik") Present: jeg stikker, passive: jeg stikkes - jeg blev stukket Past: jeg stak, passive: (missing) - jeg blev stukket (note the vowels i - a -u) One of the few strong verbs with a past passive/reflexive, probably because the stem ends on a vowel): to see = "se" (stem = "se") Present: jeg ser, Passive: jeg ses - jeg bliver set Past: jeg så, jeg sås - jeg blev set (note the vowels i - å - e, -and the irregular participle) -----------
This time I have not the faintest idea what you are talking about. Is it word order quite generally, since you mention SVO? Edited by Iversen on 25 July 2007 at 7:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| burntgorilla Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6388 days ago 202 posts - 206 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Danish | Message 13 of 97 27 July 2007 at 1:27pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thank you for the information on the passive, Iversen. With respect to the word order bit, the book had a big table with: front position, finite verb, subject, clausal adverbial, non-finite verb, object/complement/real subject and other adverbial written along the top, along with "link position" and some other ones for specific cases. The words were aligned according to their function in the sentence under the different headings, and I found it all a bit confusing and complex.
Today I finished the TY course. I did the last three units very poorly, I just read the dialogs and did the true/false questions. I saw the units more as a chore than anything else so I thought it would be best just to finish it. Right now I am taking words from the dictionary at the back and putting them into a flash card program. I have also been reading through the grammar book, and feel I understand "det/den" a bit better now. Still no sign of my dictionary, but hopefully it will be here soon. Once that arrives I will start reading newspaper articles online. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| burntgorilla Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6388 days ago 202 posts - 206 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Danish | Message 14 of 97 29 July 2007 at 5:11pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I have been adding words into a flash card program the last couple of days. I use a Mac, which means I can't get Mnemosyne to work. It is possible, but requires lots of Unix-y like fiddling that is beyond me. So I'm using a program called iFlash. It's good, but shareware so I'm not sure what to do when the trial runs out. I'm not sure if it's so good that I want to buy it.
I have about 450 words on now, and I have split them up into common gender nouns, neuter genders, verbs, and one big one for everything since I can't be bothered dividing up adverbs, adjectives, conjunctions, prepositions and all the others. I study twenty in one go, retesting myself until I know all of them. I'm not sure how well they'll stick, but if I do it several times a day on different groups it's bound to filter in eventually. Does anyone know how many words Danish has? I heard that the vocabulary was quite limited because new words are created by sticking old ones together, but I don't know what "limited" means exactly. Putting words in has helped me get a better feel for the way the words work - I can remember past tense constructions better, and the strong verbs seem to act in somewhat similar ways. I read a little on affixes in the grammar book, and was pleased to come across "utrolig" and be able to get the vague meaning of it without looking it up. However, a knowledge of affixes only gets you so far. I believe "utrolig" means "incredible" and I can see how the three components create the meaning, but it could easily mean "unthinkable". But then "incredible" doesn't really stick to its literal meaning either. I listened to a bit of Danish radio yesterday. I found it interesting that they had someone speaking on English, and what I think was someone translating each paragraph. I think Danes also subtitle foreign TV and films? They seem much more receptive to foreign languages than British people. I found that the speakers spoke quite slowly, and I think with a bigger vocabulary I could understand them quite well. I don't think it is a myth that Spanish people speak more quickly - I can listen to Spanish fairly well and many times to be it seems to be very rapid fire. When I was much worse at listening to Spanish I would only be able to pick out a couple of words from the continuous stream of Spanish. Listening to Danish, I think I can make a better guess at where the words begin and end, I just don't know what any of them are. Tomorrow I will start shadowing the TY dialogs, just for something to practice pronunciation with. The glottal stop is causing me problems; not because I can't do it or don't know what it is, but I just don't hear it. Not once while listening through the dialogs did I think "aha, that was a glottal stop". But I'm sure it would be very clear to a Dane if I didn't use it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6647 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 15 of 97 30 July 2007 at 4:40am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Try to listen for places with a short and strongly stressed syllable followed by a unstressed schwa-vowel. The opposite is a situation with two vowels that almost merges in the middle and no. 1 is long and moderately stressed. Most of the phonemic pairs involve fairly rare words, but here are a few: bi'er (bees) versus bier (waits) ti'er (10'er) versus tier (is silent) There are other cases where a word with a glottal stop can be paired with one with a weakly pronounced or silent consonant: ti'er (10'er) versus tiger (tiger) kø'er (cows) versus kører (drives) In some cases there is a consonant between the two vowels. Unlike the situation in Cockney - where the stop replaces a consonant - the consonant after a Danish glottal stop is always clearly pronounced: møl'ler (name) versus møller (mills) mo'rer (moors (people)) versus morer (entertains) mo'ser (squashes) versus moser (moors (places)) OBS: the second vowel does not have to be a schwa, though that is the most common situation - simply because the vowels of all endings have developed into schwa. I have no phonemic pairs, but here are a couple of examples, mostly with an 'i' as the second vowel: ba'sisk (basic in chemistry) versus basis (base in geometry) ko'misk (comical) ko'nisk (conical) versus kone (wife) mi'nimum versus minus tha'lamus (brain center) versus talere (speakers) If you miss a stop it is not the end of the world, - in fact several Danish dialects have no stop at all. Edited by Iversen on 30 July 2007 at 5:37am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| burntgorilla Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6388 days ago 202 posts - 206 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Danish | Message 16 of 97 30 July 2007 at 12:10pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thank you for your posts, Iversen. I'm genuinely finding them very helpful. I haven't done any shadowing today yet, but if I do any later I'll try and listen at the points you suggest. I noticed that you said that the vowels of all endings have developed into a schwa - do you mean all plural endings, or more generally? I know that the definite article "et" doesn't have the "t" pronounced, but I think the "n" in "en" is pronounced, if only a little bit? Time to do some shadowing and pay close attention to the sounds, I think.
Just as an example, would "taget" (past participle of "tage") have a glottal stop? I have also finished typing words into my flash card program. I have almost 650, which I hope will be a pretty firm basis for me. Now all I have to do is learn them. I find that random Danish words are popping into my head during the day, which can only be a good thing. I was on Facebook today, and discovered that two people who will be starting at my uni with me in October are Danish, which made me stupidly excited as I might get a chance to speak Danish with them. Edited by burntgorilla on 30 July 2007 at 12:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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