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Danish pronunciation example | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| SimonGray Newbie Denmark Joined 5901 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes | Message 1 of 9 29 September 2008 at 9:16am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm a speaker of (Copenhagen) Danish and I thought Alexander Arguelles's pronunciation of Danish in this video* (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=k8q7LVy8xHM), thought excellent for one who doesn't speak the language fluently, is a rather far cry from modern Danish. It sounds more like the Danish of fifty years ago.
I have re-recorded the text (I count one spelling mistake and a couple of grammar mistakes, but I just disregarded them) and uploaded it so you can hear what modern Danish sounds like. Sorry for the bad quality of the recording, though! Danish is a bit slower and less slurry when read aloud than when spoken, so it should be possible to follow. Here it is: http://simoninchina.dk/upload/luther_siger_at.mp3 
Anyway, if anyone needs some assistance in pronouncing Danish I'll be happy to help. *taken from this topic: Edited by SimonGray on 29 September 2008 at 9:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Rameau Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6108 days ago 149 posts - 258 votes  4 sounds Speaks: English*, GermanC1, Danish Studies: Swedish, French, Icelandic | Message 2 of 9 05 October 2008 at 12:58am | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks for this clip; I've had rather a bit of trouble hearing Danish spoken outside of educational materials and the occasional newscast.
Concerning pronunciation, I have a small question relating to the unstressed e's at the end of words. I've noticed a tendency for them to be dropped in rapid speech, but exactly how frequently this occurs seems to vary from speaker to speaker (some almost always dropping them, others just on occasion), and they seem to be dropped more frequently from some words than from others. Are there any particular rules/guidelines relating to this? Also, would clearly pronouncing all of the e's simply make one sound like a careful speaker, or would it seem stilted and unnatural? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 3 of 9 05 October 2008 at 9:58am | IP Logged | |||||
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Some people pronounce the -e more clearly than others, but the tendency clearly is to leave it out. The trouble is that it has left a mark on the precedent sound, and if you do decide to pronounce the -e for clarity's sake, then it also has consequences for the way you pronounce the preceding sounds. For instance the very common verb 'køre' (drive) is normally pronounced as something like 'køo", with one long sliding wowl at the end. The final o here is an open o-sound (which also can be written as å), and it can be seen as a vocalized remnant of the original consonantal r. If you pronounce the -e, then the 'r' also becomes more like a consonant again (though rarely a fullfledged guttural r-sound as in the initial position). All this is very complicated, and you have to listen to a lot of Danish before itbecomes second nature to you, so my advice to language learners would be to aim for a slightly more 'careful' pronunciation than the one used by the Danes, at least until you can speak as fast as they do. You can soon enough become incomprehensible like the rest of us.
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| Rameau Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6108 days ago 149 posts - 258 votes 4 sounds Speaks: English*, GermanC1, Danish Studies: Swedish, French, Icelandic | Message 4 of 9 06 October 2008 at 3:08am | IP Logged | |||||
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Ah. Well, I suppose I'd rather appear to be over-enunciating everything than simply to simply appear to have poor pronunciation. In any case, I've uploaded an attempt of mine at reciting the above passage. Is it passable? Completely off the mark? Any mispronunciations stand out particularly?
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| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 5 of 9 06 October 2008 at 11:53am | IP Logged | |||||
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Quite good- There is one short passage (just after "jag har lånt en bok"): "for nogen sidis år", which I simply don't understand. There are also a few slips of the tongue, such as 'ven' pronounced 'fen' (as in German) and 'aistid'. Apart from that it is mainly a question of minor adjustments, not errors as such.
Your unstressed e's are not a problem - if you hadn't mentioned them yourself I wouldn't have noticed them. Your open wowels have a tendency to become a little bit too closed, for instance the 'o' in 'bog' and the first 'e' in 'deres' right in the beginnning. The current situation is that open vowels generally are becoming more open in Danish, especially close to an 'r' (whether it is pronounced or not) - if you compare voices from the 50es and 60es with the language of today's teenagers the difference will become clear. This does normally not affect closed vowels, and the closed 'ø' i 'mine bedste bøger' should remain closed (whether you pronounce the 'g' or not). You also have a tendency to delay the phrasal stress, for instance you put the main stress on 'stue' in the passage "hans store hyggelige stue", where most Danes would put it on the first adjective, 'store', maybe with a secondary stress on 'stue'. In the passage "fundet deres helvede" you only put one stress, on 'helvede', where normal Danish intonation would entail one stress on 'fundet' and one more on 'helvede'. But as I said, these are minor points. We have had people living in Denmark for forty years who have more accent than you have right now. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4829 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 6 of 9 08 June 2012 at 6:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, sorry to wake up an old thread, but I didn't want to start a new one for a
relatively minor point. In passing though, I was listening to Prof. Arguelles on YouTube last night speaking Danish, Swedish and Norwegian. I'm not sure if the Danish recording was more recent than the one the OP was referring to - I have not checked - but anyway, it sounded pretty impressive to my ears. To my actual question: the final "d" in words like "mad" and "morgenmad". I thought it was supposed to be a soft "th" sound, but I keep hearing it (on the TYS Danish CDs) as a sort of quiet "l" sound. I am therefore quite tempted to think of it relating to the English word "meal", although I then see that English "meal" in Danish is actually "måltid", so my little theory would appear to be shot down. I'm more interested in reading and listening at the moment, than speaking, but it would be nice to know if I should be aiming at a "th" sound or an "l" sound, even if the result might not sound all that different in practice, as it seems to be a very quiet sound in those sort of words. (I have to admit to some hearing issues, which may not be helping.) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kartof Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5067 days ago 391 posts - 550 votes Speaks: English*, Bulgarian*, Spanish Studies: Danish | Message 7 of 9 08 June 2012 at 6:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
This also gave me some trouble a couple months back and, from what I understand, the soft d in Danish should be pronounced as an approximation of the 'th' sound in English (the 'th' sound in the, not in there). The tongue should just graze the front of the teeth which can make it sound like a 'l' sound to an unfamiliarized English speaker. Correct me if I'm wrong! 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4829 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 8 of 9 08 June 2012 at 10:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
Tak for det. Perhaps I should have extended my search, before posting, as this question was covered in part of this 2009 thread: http://www.how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.a sp?TID=16689 (I had problems getting that to work as a clickable link. If it doesn't work for you, the thread was entitled "Thread for stupid questions about Danish") I suppose I am glad that I'm not the only one hearing it as an "l", but I'm sure you are correct, and all the other sources seem to be saying it's a soft "th" sound as well. Ah well, to misquote the old song "Dansk never promised you a rose garden ..." :-) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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