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Why learn Danish over other language? | ||
Tags: Danish | Reasons for study | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 7137 days ago 1152 posts - 1818 votes  Speaks: English*, German, French, Afrikaans, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch Studies: Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Modern Hebrew, Malay, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 9 of 59 01 December 2008 at 5:04pm | IP Logged | ||
I like Danish TV programs we can watch in Australia. That is a reason to get me started. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| SlickAs Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5868 days ago 185 posts - 287 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French, Swedish Studies: Thai, Vietnamese | Message 10 of 59 01 December 2008 at 7:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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To meet the opposite sex is as good a reason for learning a language as for business or literature or art. Danish, Swedish, etc are blonde languages. Italian, Spanish, etc are brunette languages. You speak Danish, you will meet many beautiful people of the opposite sex that are blonde.
People learn German because it is an important business Language. French for food, culture, etc. If you speak French in Paris, the locals will yawn. Danish is a language that no-one HAS to learn or is forced to learn at school. Danes are well aware of this. Small amounts of Danish will bring big smiles of delight from Danes. Because although they speak English, they HAD to learn English, you CHOSE to learn Danish. And because of that, learning Danish will have you embraced by Danes. That alone is reason enough. Danes are really nice people. Combine that with the fact that Copenhagen is a beautiful city that would be a very pleasent place to live, more cosmopolitan than Stockholm and Oslo, and the accessibility of the other Nordic languages, and you have a language that demands to be learned. With my values, this is a much better language to learn than German. 15 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| rob Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6156 days ago 287 posts - 288 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Norwegian, Mandarin | Message 11 of 59 01 December 2008 at 10:03pm | IP Logged | ||
I have heard Norwegian people say "You should learn Swedish as there are more of them and we understand Swedish". I have heard Swedish people say "You shouldn't bother learning Swedish as we all know English". However, I have never heard a Danish person's opinion on learning Danish. Does anyone have any experience here? Perhaps Iverson can give us his opinion? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| SlickAs Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5868 days ago 185 posts - 287 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French, Swedish Studies: Thai, Vietnamese | Message 12 of 59 01 December 2008 at 11:45pm | IP Logged | ||
I speak about my experience with Swedish, but am sure that it would be close to identical had I learned Danish instead. Scandinavians speak small languages. They therefore need to learn big ones to operate in the broader world. When they say "Don't learn Swedish (or Danish or Norwegian)", they are saying 2 things: first they are being humble and "what? little old me? No, please! Don't put yourself out! I am not important. I would feel uncomfortable if you went to all that effort for little old me" style sentiment. And the other is that they have learned big languages from necessity (like English), and would not learn a small language themselves, so encourage you to learn something big. But that said, the reaction you get from speaking their little language is unlike the reception you get from the speakers of large "important" languages. They are touched, helpful, and will compliment you on the smallest progress. They have time and paitence and will sit down with you and want to get to know you, this person who is learning their language. They will want to know why, they are curious about you. They want to be your friend. People who are shy, or have rusty English that they are self-concious about will relax around you, and be prepared to help you with a missing word by promting you in English and warm to you. I heard a theory that the reaction you get from being able to speak a language is inversely proportional to its importance. So a Frenchman is not going to do backflips because you learned French. You are not going to really congratulate a Dutch speaker on his/her English. But you speak to a Haitian in creole, even if it is only a greeting and you will get a scream of delight. Speak to a Swede in Swedish or a Dane in Danish, and they are touched. Add to this the imtimacy you get with people as a result of speaking their language. Because you know how they speak to each other and how they speak to themselves in their own internal dialogues... For example in Swedish (and Danish will be similar, I believe they say "vær venlig"), there is no real word for "Please". You can just add a "thanks" to the end of the sentence for politeness if you want. But what they will generally say is "Var snäll och ..." which translates to "Be nice and ...". "Be nice and open the window" for example. Now, in English "please" is kind of a selfish word. we can say "Hey, A*hole! Open that window please!" and there is no contradiction. But not in Swedish (or Danish). Imagine you went around your life telling people that they are nice when they do things for you. And people tell you that you are nice when you do things for them. Would it change the way you think about the world slightly? That is just one example of an idiom that informs about their worldview. When you learn one of these languages you gain an intimacy with their culture that even someone who has lived there decades but never learned the language never got. This is not lost on them. They really like that you bothered to learn their language. That is the way I see it, anyway. Other people who have learned a Scandinavian language as a second language without any good reason should be able to confirm. Edited by SlickAs on 02 December 2008 at 12:46am 28 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| rob Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6156 days ago 287 posts - 288 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Norwegian, Mandarin | Message 13 of 59 02 December 2008 at 12:48am | IP Logged | ||
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SlickAs: What a nice post! :~)
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6694 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 14 of 59 02 December 2008 at 2:39am | IP Logged | ||
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SlickAs has said everything that needs to be said about the reaction you will get if some non-Scandinavian learns a Scandinavian language including Danish, - and a Dane like me is too humble and too realistic to suggest that you should drop learning English and learn Danish instead. I will just point out that most of you are here because you like to learn languages, and then you might choose to see spoken Danish as a challenge and written Danish as a breeze. Why do people climb mountains? They do it because they are there, as Hillary allegedly said (the one from Mt. Everest, not the politician). OK, Danish is there, so be nice and climb it.
7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Rameau Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6098 days ago 149 posts - 258 votes 4 sounds Speaks: English*, GermanC1, Danish Studies: Swedish, French, Icelandic | Message 15 of 59 02 December 2008 at 5:00am | IP Logged | ||
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Because it's an interesting language? That was my primary motivation, in any case.
Additionally, Danish (or more accurately East Old Norse) also had a significant influence on the development of English, which can make studying it interesting from a comparative historical perpective... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6694 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 16 of 59 02 December 2008 at 6:53am | IP Logged | ||
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If you are interested in that aspect then try to get hold of a copy of Jespersen's old "Growth and Structure of the English language". The influence on English is documented there, and if you wanted to know more you should learn Old Norse (or Icelandic) rather than Modern Danish. The reason for learning Danish should be interest in the language itself from a linguistic point of view, in the people who speak it, maybe in our authors (we have more than H.C.Andersen) or maybe a mild case of collector's mania. I have learnt several languages that I don't really need to know just for fun, and I have never regretted doing it. Edited by Iversen on 02 December 2008 at 6:54am 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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