Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Learning Danish!

I wondered how much I have learned in Sweden that will help me in Denmark language-wise, especially because all the Swedes I talked to said these (mean?) things about the Danish language: 1) that it was like Swedish but with porridge in your mouth, 2) that Danes can understand Swedish but if I learn Danish my Swedes (and yes I mean to make that possessive- I met them, their mine now) won't understand me, 3) and also they told me that I will think I know what word to use and then all of a sudden it will be a completely different word or mean something different - till example: in Swedish "frukost" means breakfast, but in Danish it means lunch HOW CRAZY IS THAT? Not actually sooo crazy but okay.

But here's what I've got so far:

New things:

"riot" på Svensk is "upplopp", but in Danish it's uh, something else, sorry I forgot.
"konstig" in Swedish means "weird", but in Danish "weird" is "underlig"
"maybe" in Swedish is "kanske", but in Danish it's "måske"

Old things:

I'm REALLY GLAD that "duktig" exists in both languages, although I think it's spelled differently, because it just means you've done a good job at something.
Of course "tack" is the same, although it's spelled "tak" in Denmark.
And it appears that if you change "t" to "d" in many words, they are the same, like "food" in Swedish was "mat" but in Danish it's "mad" - I swear I'm not overgeneralizing here, but I will have to add more examples later when I can think of them.

And sadly, things I have to leave behind:

Fika, does not exist in Danish.
Bra! or Jätte bra! do not exist in Danish as nice general expressions for "good".
And I haven't seen that many Kanelbullar or Lussekatter, my delicious friends.

But after a couple weeks of what I will call "down time" (more accurately: Sweden withdrawal pains, sleeping, Christmas! and culture shock in Germany) between last semester and this one, I'm ready to go at this learning a new language thing again, this time with full intention, not just sincere hopes that I will learn to speak it.

1 comment:

  1. I think having 'fika' exist only in Swedish is a good thing- this way you can always keep it in mind in a very pleasant way, and it won't get lost by being changed into a Danish word... a nice coffe break in a nice coffee place can always be "fika" for you!

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