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Danish is the hardest Germanic language

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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages Post Reply
40 messages over 5 pages: 1 2 3 4
Hekje
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 Message 33 of 40
24 July 2012 at 10:04pm | IP Logged 
@montmorency: Thank you very much for your thoughts! Those examples explain a lot. Best of luck with your
Danish.

(I should also mention that I'm living vicariously through your log at the moment.)
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jeff_lindqvist
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 Message 34 of 40
24 July 2012 at 11:38pm | IP Logged 
montmorency wrote:
Then there are the final "d"s which sound like "th", but to some of us, sometimes, sound like an "l" sound. (But Danes writing on here can't understand why we think that...).


It's not the first time I'm reading this... It depends a lot on the kind of "l" you're thinking of (considering that there are many kinds of "l" sounds out there) and the amount of listening you've done (many learners are 100% "sure" that this or that sound is a perfect match to a sound in their native language - guess why people rarely have a convincing accent?).
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Corinwright1994
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 Message 35 of 40
25 July 2012 at 5:10am | IP Logged 
i often think of those as "L" when they're at the end of the word : mulighed

and "TH" when they're in the middle of a word : hedder
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daegga
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 Message 36 of 40
25 July 2012 at 2:47pm | IP Logged 
That's the problem with categoric perception: there are different categories in different languages. In English, there is /ð/ and there is /l/. Danish has both those phonemes too, but the border between them is different. The Danish /ð/ is actually somewhere between the English /ð/ and the English /l/ acoustically. I guess most Danes could distinguish between their /ð/ and the English /ð/, thus they would have 3 categories in an area where English only has 2.
The thing is that the Danish /ð/ is usually no [ð] at all, but rather a dental approximant. Furthermore, the tongue is not "on" the teeth, but shortly behind them.
Maybe learning to pronounce it the right way first would help with hearing it the right way. I can't really tell though, I have never had a problem with hearing the right one of /d/, /ð/ and /l/. They sound all very much different to me.
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Medulin
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 Message 37 of 40
25 July 2012 at 9:40pm | IP Logged 
The Danish [s] sounds very funny, it's a hissing sound (reminiscent of Northern Spanish pronunciation of s and Northern Dutch [s]).
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montmorency
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 Message 38 of 40
25 July 2012 at 11:21pm | IP Logged 
Hekje wrote:
@montmorency: Thank you very much for your thoughts! Those examples
explain a lot. Best of luck with your
Danish.

(I should also mention that I'm living vicariously through your log at the moment.)


It's kind of you to say that.
But I must admit I'm not giving Danish as much attention as I should be doing at the
moment. :-(


I'm trying to get over a certain "hump" at the moment in my German (a not unpleasant
hump, but still a hump), and then I'll really go to town on Danish. That's what I keep
telling myself :-)



If you are thinking of doing it though, don't be afraid of it.
The more of us, the merrier :-)




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montmorency
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 Message 39 of 40
25 July 2012 at 11:31pm | IP Logged 
jeff_lindqvist wrote:
montmorency wrote:
Then there are the final "d"s which sound
like "th", but to some of us, sometimes, sound like an "l" sound. (But Danes writing on
here can't understand why we think that...).


It's not the first time I'm reading this... It depends a lot on the kind of "l" you're
thinking of (considering that there are many kinds of "l" sounds out there) and the
amount of listening you've done (many learners are 100% "sure" that this or that sound
is a perfect match to a sound in their native language - guess why people rarely have a
convincing accent?).



No, and I was aware this theme has been repeated several times, when I wrote it, and
was wary of the response I would get.


Anyway, I was just trying to give an illustration, not a definitive statement.
I suppose the lesson is: listen more, but be sure of exactly what it is that you are
listening to.









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Serpent
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 Message 40 of 40
27 July 2012 at 1:49am | IP Logged 
Medulin in another thread wrote:
for example, for THE SUN you can hear [suln, sull, sula, suRa, sulo] depending on the dialect (solen in Bergen, and W. Oslo, sola in Western Norway and in the North (with an L), solå in Rogaland, sola (with an English R, in many parts of the Southeastern Norway and in Trondheim))...
You should link them together to the same thing ;)
That's my main difficulty with the Scandinavian languages, I'd say: many words are short!!! Ok sol(e) is also short in the Romance languages, but yeah...

Reminds me on how we were sightseeing in Turku and mum saw "Aura å" on the map.

mum:why does it say Aura a?
me: because [o:] is the Swedish for river.

:DDD

And then comes Danish and makes them even less recognizable. That's also my problem with the English dialects btw, I'd say.

And the compound words are like the Romance short words lol.

Edited by Serpent on 27 July 2012 at 1:50am



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