Learning the Lingo

I have been asked, on numerous occasions if I have a second language....I just laugh and attempting to explain that by the terms of the Australian school system, if you can count to 10 in German after learning it for a whole year- you're fluent. 

Coming here though, I am so amazed at the amount of languages people can actually speak. Some of my friends at school can speak French, English, Danish and are learning German, some even know German and are learning Spanish! It's crazy!! So for them, me not knowing another language is kinda strange, especially because languages have been pushed so hard all throughout their schooling.   

I suppose that my lack of foreign vocabulary has made me even eager to learn Danish and I have found that learning a new language is so much fun! Okay, so there are some days where it is so difficult but google translate has always got my back. I have a feeling though that I will come back to Australia with REALLY bad English, as the Danish language is a little confusing and steers clear of our confusing grammar

For example

When saying the number 21 in danish you say one and twenty (so the numbers are totally reversed)

Once I got my head wrapped around this, my next challenge was the word 'ikke' which in English means 'not'. The Danish way of placing the word ikke is extremely confusing to an english speaker as it is placed in a completely different place to where we would normally say it in a sentence. 

BUT the most challenging thing for me when learning Danish has been sentence structure as in English we say so many little words in sentences which the Danes do not. 

Okay so lets take a simple sentence like 'I will not go to the movies" 

In Danish the correct way of saying this is "Jeg vil ikke gå i biografen"

(so they are saying i will not go to movies) Thus they have eliminated the word 'the'. 

Another example is the sentence "she is not an idiot"

Danes say "hun er ikke idiot" (she is not idiot) thus the elimination of words such as 'the' and 'an' and 'a' has been really really really confusing and made me realise how many words we put in sentences! 

Listening to conversations is now so much more fun because sometimes I can actually get a general idea of what people are talking about. This post is an accurate representation of my concentration face;

http://blazersandpins.tumblr.com/post/39790785123 

I also like listening for phrases that are said a lot and then later ask what the heck it means. This has been rather funny! So a lot of people at school say the phrase "what did you say?" in Danish this is "hvad siger du?" but because they say it SO SO fast, I thought that they were saying "hvad zero?" My host dad was very confused!

One of the girls in my class has also helped in my danish learning by creating a facebook page called 'learn danish with Karoline' where every day she posts a new word, phrase or sentence for me to learn. This is so sweet, and is actually an amazing idea :) So far i can say 'slippers' in Danish and the sentence 'this is a train. it stops at the station'.

The most annoying thing about learning Danish has been the fact that everyone in Denmark speaks English. This is super good at school and i wouldn't have survived the first month without it, however when you attempt to order something from a cafe in Danish such as a 'varm kakao' the shop keeper automatically switches into English. I think it is because they can hear my accent, or perhaps my facial expressions of 'concentration/im trying to be a local/please dont recognise that im foerign/im trying really hard' give it away. Who knows... But my aim for the next month is to be able to hold a conversation with someone and of course order something in Danish without the person automatically switching into English :) My long term goal is to read harry potter in danish 

The biggest and most ambitious step though in my danish learning adventures has been changing the language of my iphone from english to danish. This is actually a really good learning curve as simple words such as camera and photo are now in danish and i see them on a regular basis so slowly they are sinking into my brain.

Anyways, this afternoon two of my friends from school are coming over to cook up a storm. We are going to tackle Danish cinnamon scrolls (they are the best) and of course pavlova. Will be super fun and hyggelit :)