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burntgorilla
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 6436 days ago

202 posts - 206 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Danish

 
 Message 57 of 97
12 August 2007 at 5:57pm | IP Logged 
Does anyone know of sites with Danish audiobooks? I found Librivox, which had a few, but I couldn't find a corresponding ebook for them. I'm trying to do the listening-reading method but I can't find anything to use.
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burntgorilla
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 6436 days ago

202 posts - 206 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Danish

 
 Message 58 of 97
13 August 2007 at 6:38pm | IP Logged 
Another little update. I'm feeling quite pleased with the vocabulary. I can remember most of them the first time they come up. Whether I could use them from memory in a sentence is another matter, of course. Now I feel I am down to those irritating words that never seem to stick in your head. I could never remember "quedar" in Spanish, until I just wrote it down in my book and kept referring to it. I'm at that stage now with a few words, usually a pair where one is the other with a prefix added on, such as "hente" and "afhente". I get them the wrong way around far too much. I seem to remember the nouns rather well though. I moved on to shadowing unit 5. It's a bit faster again, but I was pleased to discover that I have a good idea how something should sound from reading it. I still get the odd surprise, but in general it's quite good. However my pronunciation is still far from perfect and needs work.

Is there a glottal stop in the teen numbers, such as "femten"? I think I hear "fem'en". If it's not, it's some feature that appears in English somewhere, because the sound and feeling is familiar.

I also received my Assimil French course today. I was hoping that since it's only a little bit each day I would have no problems doing the two languages together. I found the first French exercise today harder than Danish, actually. Danish can have freaky pronunciation but the sounds are pretty similar to English. French is all over the place. It will be interesting to see how the Assimil course works out, if the method is good I might incorporate it into my other languages. I get my A Level results on Thursday, so I'm feeling a bit stressed and might explain why I feel frustrated with my studies a bit these days. If I get into my first choice uni I'll have a couple of Danish people in my year, so I will have to befriend them and get to take me on a visit to Denmark. Mercenary, but necessary hehe. Since I'll be studying Spanish and Russian there, in a highly pressurised environment, I'm not sure how I'll manage to keep up my other languages. Danish shouldn't be too hard if I read Danish newspapers online and listen to internet radio, but I don't know if I'll be able to do Assimil each day.

My friend who was in Europe gets back tomorrow (I think), so hopefully she'll have brought me back a magazine or something to read.
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Iversen
Super Polyglot
Moderator
Denmark
berejst.dk
Joined 6695 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
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 Message 59 of 97
13 August 2007 at 8:20pm | IP Logged 
burntgorilla wrote:
glossa.passion wrote:
You're welcome :-)

Can you please give me an example for inversions in the word order?


Well, first of all there is an inversion with simple questions:

Du kan se mig.
Kan du se mig?

I understand this ok since it's the same in English. But it also inverts in subordinate clauses and things (I think, I'm hazy on clauses). So you'd say:

Hvis vejret klarer op, kan vi gå en tur.
(If the weather clears up, we can go for a walk)


There is no inversion in the subordinate in this last example (vejret.. klarer), - maybe you are thinking about a correct, but slightly more formal construction:

Klarer vejret op, kan vi gå en tur.

Here "Klarer vejret sig" is as much a conditional subordinate phrase as "Hvis vejret klarer op", but in its form it closely ressembles a question, and it has the same kind of inversion as a question.

However there is an inversion in the main clause (kan ... vi). Do you remember the rule that I mentioned about heavy adverbials that force an inversion in a main phrase? That also applies to the situation where the adverbial is a whole subordinate clause, and that's the reason that there is an inversion in "kan vi gå en tur". With the subordinate at the end, the inversion of "vi" and "kan" isn't possible:

Vi kan gå en tur, hvis vejret klarer op.

However the special type of conditional in the shape of a question has to stand at the beginning, at least in modern Danish (ie. not *"Vi kan gå en tur, klarer vejret op").


Quote:
Is there a glottal stop in the teen numbers, such as "femten"? I think I hear "fem'en"


No

But there are glottals stops in "fem'ogtyve", "fem'ogtredive" etc. etc., and there are two in "fem'hundrede og fem'og halvtreds (555)" - at least if you are pronouncing these numbers clearly. But you can say "en femoghalvtreds stykker" (note the "en", - this means "something like 55 items"). Here the stress is on "stykker" and 55 consequently looses its stop.



Edited by Iversen on 13 August 2007 at 8:36pm

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burntgorilla
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 6436 days ago

202 posts - 206 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Danish

 
 Message 60 of 97
14 August 2007 at 7:51am | IP Logged 
Oh dear, I'd got the subordinate and main clauses mixed up. But there's an inversion, so at least I understood that. I think I will sit down today and really study word order and things. I am getting close to understanding it, but I just need it to click in my head.

Regarding the numbers, I'm not sure what's she's doing. It's definitely not "femten". Must just be the way the "m" and "t" go together.
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burntgorilla
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 6436 days ago

202 posts - 206 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Danish

 
 Message 61 of 97
17 August 2007 at 6:38am | IP Logged 
Time for a little update. I haven't done much in the last couple of days because I didn't really have anything to do. However, as of today I am no longer dictionary-less so I can start reading stuff! It is Gyldendals Red dictionary, but only a small one. I have to admit I'm a bit worried about it. It seems to be written with Danish learners of English in mind, so it doesn't give the genders of nouns, their plural forms, the past tense forms of verbs, and I don't think it has comparative and superlative forms of adjectives and adverbs. Maybe it has a kind of key at the back or something. Still, it's better than nothing.

Yesterday I got my A level results and today received my freshers' pack so Danish hasn't really been my focus. I'm going to try and get back on track now.
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burntgorilla
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 6436 days ago

202 posts - 206 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Danish

 
 Message 62 of 97
17 August 2007 at 11:26am | IP Logged 
I had a closer look at the dictionary. I think I will have problems with it, since the English - Danish bit is very unhelpful. It gives irregular verbs in English and all that, but nothing for Danish. But if I'm coming across these words in texts I will hopefully be able to get the extra information I need. Routledge's dictionary also lacks genders and things. Why are good Danish dictionaries so hard to find?
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patuco
Diglot
Moderator
Gibraltar
Joined 7007 days ago

3795 posts - 4268 votes 
Speaks: Spanish, English*
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 Message 63 of 97
17 August 2007 at 4:53pm | IP Logged 
burntgorilla wrote:
Yesterday I got my A level results and today received my freshers' pack so Danish hasn't really been my focus. I'm going to try and get back on track now.

Sorry for the off-topic (and inquisitive) post but what did you get? Did you manage to get into your first choice university?
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Iversen
Super Polyglot
Moderator
Denmark
berejst.dk
Joined 6695 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 64 of 97
17 August 2007 at 6:53pm | IP Logged 
To burntgorilla: I visited my local public library today, and because I had read your last post I checked the collection of English <-> Danish dictionaries. In fact I did find a tiny little bi-directional English-Danish dictionary from Gyldendal, but the 'normal' Red dictionaries from Gyldendal are all uni-directional and much bigger, - the English->Danish dictionary alone weighs 1,3 kg and probably contains something 45-50.000 words (with grammatical annotations). I'm afraid that you will outgrow your new acquisition soon, though it can still be used for quick reference purposes while you are away from home. For study purposes you need something better.

... and congratulations from me too.


Edited by Iversen on 17 August 2007 at 6:54pm



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