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Thread for stupid questions about Danish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| oz-hestekræfte Senior Member Australia Joined 5683 days ago 103 posts - 117 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Danish | Message 1 of 22 31 August 2009 at 5:17am | IP Logged |
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I thought I'd start a Danish thread in the likeness of cordelia0507's "Thread for stupid questions about English"
Even though I might be the only person to post in it, at least I won't have to start a new thread every time. And hopefully the few Danes that are around wont get sick of me. So my query for today comes from watching the Danish tv comedy series, Klovn. In the episode they are all eating tea when the host discovers he has fed human flesh to his guests. Disgusted he shouts to all his guests, "STOP SPISNING!" Now is this a normal way to speak? Normally wouldn't you say "Stop med at spise" ? Then I thought hang on.. The -ning suffix means it's a noun right? But spisning is not a word in my Gylendal dictionary so I couldn't check. Google translated spisning into dining, which is a verb, and it translated "stop spisning" into "stop eating" which is also a verb. So all I can guess is he is saying something like "Stop dinner!" and google is wrong. am I close? Edited by oz-hestekræfte on 31 August 2009 at 5:20am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5604 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes | Message 2 of 22 31 August 2009 at 1:10pm | IP Logged |
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"Spisning" is a noun. So "stop dinner" is the correct translation.
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| Lingua Decaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5581 days ago 186 posts - 319 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch | Message 3 of 22 31 August 2009 at 7:27pm | IP Logged |
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"Spisning" is a noun. The translation of "stop spisning" is "stop eating".
The translation of a sentence/utterance depends on its meaning. The grammatical form is irrelevant. Here you have an -ing form of the verb in English and a noun in Danish. Edited by Lingua on 01 September 2009 at 1:01am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| abm Triglot Newbie Denmark Joined 5756 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes Speaks: Danish*, English, German Studies: Mandarin | Message 4 of 22 02 September 2009 at 11:18pm | IP Logged |
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You are right that "stop spisning" is a very unusual unusual way of saying "stop eating", yet this is certainly exactly what is meant.
I've actually seen the episode, and I think the reason could be that he is urgently wanting the eating stopped, just like a general on a battlefield may shout "indstil skydning!" (cease firing!) if given a last minute order to do so. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Rikyu-san Diglot Senior Member Denmark Joined 5533 days ago 213 posts - 413 votes Speaks: Danish*, English Studies: German, French | Message 5 of 22 07 October 2009 at 9:49pm | IP Logged |
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"Spisning" is an event (and thus a noun) but is used as a verb. We can invite people over to "spisning", but we don't use it as a verb.
In Danish we would say, "hold op med at spise" or "stop med at spise" og simply, if it was a serious matter, simply "stop!". In the last case, everybody in the situation would know that what they should stop doing was stop eating. If not, one could ask, "Hvad skal vi holde op med?" or "... med hvad?" and the host would add, "med at spise." In the dictionary, Ordbog over det danske sprog, that is covering Danish from 1700-1950, it says that the word "spisning" can be translated into the following words: "Bespisning" (English: feeding, provision of meal(s)). "Handlingen at spise (mad), især: den fortæring, nydelse af mad (og drikke), som finder sted ved visse mellemrum, til bestemte tider af dagen: indtagelse af maaltid [måltid]. Examples: Festspisning, fællesspisning. Om måltid med varm mad, i en eller anden festlig anledning, sammenkomst o. lign." It can also mean "that which people eat", food. At a time when leprocy was a huge problem and they didn't know what caused it, the Danes at the time could have said: "Der findes mange ude i landet, der er behæftede med spedalskhed, som ikke kommer af luften men af spisningen." (I have changed the sentence into modern Danish). Read the whole entry here: http://ordnet.dk/ods/opslag?opslag=spisning&submit=S%F8g I can heartily recommend this online dictionary. It has tremendous vocabulary prowess, and it shows how precise Danish can be when it is used at the very highest level. It probably doesn't get better or more beautiful than this. So in the context of the original question, what they are really doing is confusing an event with an act. "Stop the dinner" compared with "stop eating!". Unless you want to stop the event itself, one would not shout "stop spisningen", and even then, today, we would never say that. It is too formal, to archaic and strange sounding to be considered <ok. Edited by Rikyu-san on 08 October 2009 at 11:18am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| oz-hestekræfte Senior Member Australia Joined 5683 days ago 103 posts - 117 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Danish | Message 6 of 22 20 October 2009 at 1:00pm | IP Logged |
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Noget om nogen og nogle
I'm pretty sure I understand the difference between nogen and nogle, from what I've read this is something that a lot of natives have trouble with. With nogen/nogle errors often seen in newspapers and the like. My question here is more to do with the spelling and pronounciation. I have read in a couple of places that nogle is actually prounounced the same as nogen. (Which could well be the source of the confusion between these 2 words) But when I went to Forvo, the recorded pronounciation there is not the same as nogen, but is more like you would expect a word spelt nogle to be pronounced. So are there 2 pronounciations of nogle? Why is a word spelt nogle, pronounced nogen? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6708 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 7 of 22 20 October 2009 at 1:27pm | IP Logged |
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Sometimes the ortography just reflect an older stage which is seen as more correct (and still in use). The old rule was that "nogen" was an indefinite pronoun used as a substantive, both in positive and negative contexts: "der er nogen", "der er ikke nogen". "Nogle" was used in the plural instead of a proper indefinite article: "der er noget galt", and you could in some contexts use it as a substantive, mostly with a partitive function: "nogle siger det ene, nogle siger det andet" .
But in ordinary spoken Danish "nogen" is now rapidly replacing "nogle" also before a noun: "nogle gange" is now mostly pronounced as /nogen gange/. However you will still say /nogle/ if you want to stress the partitive aspect, i.e. that it is some out of a group: /nogle/ (but not all). And if you want to speak very clearly and correctly you may also choose to say /nogle gange/ instead of /nogen gange/. In writing you should still use "nogle gange" (and "noget" with things that can't be counted: "noget vrøvl"), but because this doesn't reflect the current pronunciation you can also see "nogen gange". And with a negation "nogen" is simply the correct form - "der er ikke nogen ko på isen" (=no problem). ------- In my personal idiolect "stop spisning" isn't correct. You need some kind of qualifier, which can be the definite article: "stop spisningen" (in analogy with "stop skydningen"). But for instance "stop al spisning" would also be possible. Edited by Iversen on 20 October 2009 at 1:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Xenon Tetraglot Newbie Canada Joined 5637 days ago 14 posts - 17 votes Speaks: Romanian*, English, Italian, French Studies: Russian, German | Message 8 of 22 21 October 2009 at 8:41pm | IP Logged |
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About Danish pronunciation: the soft "d"s for me sound like a soft "l" instead of an
English "th". Let's consider "med" or "rød grød med flød". Can you clarify this, please? Or can you point me toward the right place to get this information? Edited by Xenon on 21 October 2009 at 8:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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