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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| glossa.passion Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6170 days ago 267 posts - 349 votes  1 sounds Speaks: German*, EnglishC1, Danish Studies: Spanish, Dutch | Message 41 of 97 09 August 2007 at 3:58am | IP Logged | ||
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That is really a nuisance with this dictionary :-)
Perhaps you can kill some time by looking in this free online Danish course http://www.eulanguages.net/html/home.asp Maybe it's to easy for you, but better than nothing... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| burntgorilla Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6293 days ago 202 posts - 206 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Danish | Message 42 of 97 09 August 2007 at 11:09am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the link, though I already know about that site. I think it was the thing I used before the TY course arrived, so that was what got me into Danish. I remember reading the first sentence, then listening to it and being utterly confused. I like the way they grey out the letters that aren't pronounced, it helps make it clearer.
I made some good progress with flash cards today. Instead of going through just big random piles of them, I went through the neuter nouns (60ish) and the common gender ones (160). When I say "go through" I mean studying ten random ones until it tells me I've done them all. I found I remembered most of the nouns straight away, so I was well pleased with that. I also had to do a bit of driving today, so I put the TY CD in the car and listened to that. I'd forgotten that there were audio exercises where I had to make up sentences, so that was useful. I don't think I'll do it again, since the roads around here are winding with lots of traffic, so it's not really safe to not pay full attention. I've been doing a bit of comprehension with the "fr oben" site, which I think I linked to earlier on. I really like it. How difficult is Hans Christian Andersen? He's the only Danish writer I know of, and I'd like to give him a whirl at some point. Lots of people think Danish sounds really horrible, which I think is a bit harsh. I'd like to read some of his work to see how nice it sounds. Edited by burntgorilla on 09 August 2007 at 11:41am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6552 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 43 of 97 09 August 2007 at 12:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hans Christian Andersen wrote in the 1800s, and even then he had his own idiosyncratic way of using the Danish language (especially if you read the pure undiluted original versions). By all means do have a peek at his works to satisfy your curiosity (after all he is a very important figure in the history of Danish), but wait until later to really feast on them.
The Danish Ministry of Education has made some proposals as to what to read from the Danish literature, a so called 'canon' (in the Latin sense). You will find the result of its deliberations at this address - of cause it's written in Danish, but I'm sure that you can read the whole thing by now. However the proposals don't cover the current production, - it has to prove its worth first. Edited by Iversen on 09 August 2007 at 12:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| glossa.passion Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6170 days ago 267 posts - 349 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, EnglishC1, Danish Studies: Spanish, Dutch | Message 44 of 97 09 August 2007 at 12:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sorry, burntgorilla, I probably haven't read your thread properly. Nevertheless, do you happen to know this Danish course?
http://tea.fernuni-hagen.de/Iglo/Install/kurs/course_542.htm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| burntgorilla Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6293 days ago 202 posts - 206 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Danish | Message 45 of 97 09 August 2007 at 8:12pm | IP Logged | ||
Oooh, a lovely link! Thank you for that. I find literature is my main way of getting new vocabulary. I found a couple of hundred new words in about twenty of those Antonio Machado poems. Do you think it is Andersen's idiosyncratic style that contributed to his art? Sometimes I feel that the best authors are the ones who know how and when to break the rules - when to use a slightly ungrammatical phrase, when to make up a totally new word, or use one in a new context. I have always remembered a line in a comprehension text in school. A girl in a dress was angry and stormed off around a corner, and the author wrote that "her dress switched around the corner". "Swished" would be the grammatically better word, but the sound of "switched" creates the perfect image of her stomping off around the corner, as if the dress snapped around behind her. I think Dickens was very skilled at playing around with words for humorous effect as well. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| burntgorilla Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6293 days ago 202 posts - 206 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Danish | Message 46 of 97 09 August 2007 at 8:13pm | IP Logged | ||
Yes, that's the one I was talking about. :) Sorry for not finding out it's proper name or anything. Have you used it? I like the texts in it, but feel that the questions are a little bit of a waste of time. I do like that course though. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| glossa.passion Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6170 days ago 267 posts - 349 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, EnglishC1, Danish Studies: Spanish, Dutch | Message 47 of 97 10 August 2007 at 2:43am | IP Logged | ||
No, I haven't used it. I prefer textbooks and audio-cds/mp3 :-) Two weeks ago I started with Assimil "Dänisch ohne Mühe" (Danish without toil). A very fine course with 64 lessons (I'm at the 10th). As a supplement I use Rosetta Stone Danish. And I couldn't resist to buy "Av min arm - Dänisch für Deutschsprachige" (Danish for German speaker). So there is no shortage of study material for my language learning ... but I'm not as fast as you and it will take me a while to work through all the material. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6552 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 48 of 97 10 August 2007 at 3:39am | IP Logged | ||
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To Burntgorilla: as with other grat authors it is not least Andersen's way of playing with the language that makes him a fascinating writer, but precisely this fact is also a good reason not to try to emulate his style. I have read his works in several languages (see this site), and it is clear that some translations are better than others. For instance his very personal way of letting one sentence continue into the next without a full stop - almost as a stream-of-consciousness before the term was invented - has not been adopted by the majority of the translators.
Andersen doesn't use a large amount of neologisms, but he did invent the longest word ever in Danish in "Hyrdinden og Skorstensfejeren": gedebukkebensoverogundergeneralkrigskommandersergentinde (the male form is gedebukkebensoverogundergeneralkrigskommandersergent) In the English translation at the site this form is not translated, but the corresponding male form is given as Major-general-field-sergeant-commander Billy-goat's-legs. The same thing happens in the French version, where the translator has even put the mischievous word into quotes: "sergentmajorgénéralcommandantenchefauxpiedsdebouc". This syncretic type of word formation seems almost normal in German: ZiegenbocksbeinOber- und Unterkriegsbefehlshaberin. In the Russian version the goat-aspect (a clear reference to the Greek god Pan) has been lost in the translation: обер-унтер-генерал -кригскомиссаp-сержантшей. Edited by Iversen on 10 August 2007 at 6:29am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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