|
 |
TBerg’s Stab at Danish | ||
Tags: Danish | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| TBerg Newbie United States Joined 4510 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Danish | Message 1 of 8 16 July 2012 at 6:25pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I started this log because I am a relative beginner who needs a place to record his efforts at learning Danish in
hopes that it will allow for more grounded analysis. So far, I downloaded Colloquial Danish and got through several of the lessons. I have a good beginner's level understanding of the grammar now and can understand children's books if I look up a bunch of words while reading it, which seriously negates from the efficiency of learning by reading this material. I have been pursuing the bloodhound approach to listening as described by Iversen, and I can sometimes understand the topics of Danish Radio broadcasts. I tried what I thought was shadowing the dialogues in the Colloquial listening material, but I got quickly tired of not being able to keep up with the speakers. I know that I did not really follow Professor Arguelles's systematic approach to shadowing, so I am going to give my learning a rest until I edit all of the material with Audacity, and can approach the dialogues without remembering my fatigue and frustration. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Hekje Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4695 days ago 842 posts - 1330 votes  Speaks: English*, Dutch Studies: French, Indonesian | Message 2 of 8 16 July 2012 at 7:19pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Nice to see your log here! I'll be following your writing with interest.
I also find it pretty exhausting looking up every single word in a text. Definitely give yourself time where you just enjoy the language and let it wash over you. You can always go back. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| nuriayasmin70 Diglot Senior Member Germany languagesandbeyoRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4513 days ago 132 posts - 162 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: SpanishB1, Portuguese, Czech, Hungarian | Message 3 of 8 16 July 2012 at 7:57pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Good luck with your Danish studies. I spent a week in Denmark in May and really liked the sound of the language. Once I even met someone who spoke neither German nor English, so I tried my basic Norwegian and was thrilled when the Danish woman understood me - unfortunately I could only guess her answer as Danish pronunciation is quite different from Norwegian pronunciation.
May I ask why you decided to study Danish? It doesn't seem to be a common language for someone who lives in the US. Edited by nuriayasmin70 on 16 July 2012 at 7:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TBerg Newbie United States Joined 4510 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Danish | Message 4 of 8 17 July 2012 at 12:39am | IP Logged | ||
|
I am learning Danish because I am very interested in Danish culture, Denmark being the "happiest" country and all
that. I would like to work or study there someday, and find out for myself. Comparing America with Denmark sounds really interesting to me, and Danes sound like very nice people to talk to. It makes me happy that your German-Norwegian accent was understood. I just hope my accent will be easily understandable. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4820 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 5 of 8 17 July 2012 at 12:57am | IP Logged | ||
|
@TBerg:
Hi, and welcome to the forum. I think that shadowing is a bit ambitious until one is at least reasonably advanced in any language. I can do it in German, but I've been studying that for years, and even then I get tired quite quickly. I think I prefer silent or internal shadowing (which I think Iversen also mentions). I've also been re-reading his listening like a bloodhound piece, which is very worthwhile. If you can understand some Danish Radio topics, then you can't be doing too badly! Held og lykke med dine Danske undersøgelser. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Danac Diglot Senior Member Denmark Joined 5340 days ago 162 posts - 257 votes Speaks: Danish*, English Studies: German, Serbo-Croatian, French, Russian, Esperanto | Message 6 of 8 17 July 2012 at 1:15am | IP Logged | ||
you ment to write here is "Good luck with your Danish studies", but in Danish that would be "Held og lykke med dine danskstudier". "Undersøgelse" (general meaning "investigation") is mainly used for scientific studies (Studies show...) , not for describing the act of studying. Incidentally, just for future reference, we never capitalize adjectives derived from countries, so it would always just be "dansk, norsk, svensk, russisk, amerikansk" etc. Og i øvrigt vil jeg ønske jer begge to held og lykke med at lære dansk. :) Edited by Danac on 17 July 2012 at 3:20am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| TBerg Newbie United States Joined 4510 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Danish | Message 7 of 8 26 July 2012 at 5:05am | IP Logged | ||
|
I was away for a week so that I could attend my cousin's wedding and do things with my family, so I had a relatively
long period of not studying Danish. I managed to accomplish one session of studying in my motel room, but that was only one night. Danish feels a little more remote now, but I hope I can reacquaint myself to it. Jeg vil lære at taler dansk! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 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 8 of 8 26 July 2012 at 10:40am | IP Logged | ||
|
I agree with Montmorency that pure Arguellean shadowing is hard - actually I tried it and dropped it because I simply didn't couldn't listen to an external voice while speaking myself. I then found out that I could do something in the same direction if I thought along the speech instead of speaking aloud. However then speaking aloud must be trained separately because I have also found out that being able to think isn't the same thing as being able to pronounce correctly and keep up with a normal conversation speed. To speak aloud you need both physical stamina, trained reflexes and knowledge about the precise pronunciation of the words you choose.
My current strategy for listening training is to subdivide it into two parts. The first stage of extensive listening must be listening like the famous bloodhound because you need to to learn to decode the stream of sound and organize them into words and phrases. The second stage will be to listen for the meaning, but that presupposes that you already have learnt enough words (and know their pronunciation). However you can make a shortcut if you already know what is being said from a transcript (and maybe even a translation, which turns the exercise into pure listening-reading as defined by Siomotteikiru). The final stage will of course be listening to the speech while both hearing all words AND understanding the meaning. However you can also do intensive listening. In a course the teacher may train you in understanding short phrases by repeating them again and again (and forcing you to repeat them correctly). You can do something similar on your own by using a speech synthesizer. I only know two for Danish, and the one at Acapela Box is definitely better than the one built into Google Translate. There you can input a phrase and hear it spoken by a fairly credible Danish voice, and you can make experiments by changing a word or cutting the input down to a part of a phrase. And because you can repeat it you know what is being said so you can actually 'mini-shadow' it. Personally I like to write down in homemade sound writing exactly what the voice says - which may be different from my conception of what I think the voice should have said. From there you can proceed to short sections cut out of prerecorded speech, which you can repeat as many times as needed. I know that listening like a bloodhound can feel like hard work, but I categorize it as an extensive exercise because you just let the voice(s) babble on and on while trying to hang on. But you can of course treat it as an intensive exercise if you play the same excerpt again and again until you have grasped its structure. To convert listening training into a home course in pronunciation you would have to say something and compare the result to the recordings (which is an intensive activity). But so far I haven't really done that - not since my French studies in the 70s, where I had classes in a language lab with a teacher. The alternative is just to speak, which is an extensive activity with all the pros and cons of such activities - in this case that you may learn to speak fluently, but with a bad accent which may fossilize. As usual a combination of extensive and intensive activities should solve the problem. Good luck with your studies. Edited by Iversen on 27 July 2012 at 12:06pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
