I walk into a room with many Danes in mid conversation. Well that’s because I am in Denmark and the species called The Danes live here, they also speak in something called Danish. So I walk in, they turn around to say Hi and to ask, “Did you understand anything of what we said?”
Oh yes, I have been in this country for THIRTY days and that makes me an expert linguist. I am expected to know the language already. When you were backpacking across India for ONE FULL YEAR, did I ever turn around and ask, Namaste chootiye, kya aapko Hindi aati hai? Denmark, I know you love me, but I aint no superhero. It will take a long time before I can swim in a fluent phlegm of rød grød fucking med fløde.
I am an eager student of the Danish language. I try to read things, I try to pronounce primitive, guttural sounding words, I repeat things the husband says. Sometimes he will say, You said that so well, can you say it AGAIN? That’s when I swear on all the Hindu gods and the Jesus and the Allah, Mr. Husband, if you ever do that again, I swear I will stop learning your language. It is humiliating enough that I have to play pictionary while shopping- I look at pictures and try to guess whats inside the packet. Sometimes one ends up with dog biscuits instead of dry cookies for Koldskål, coz those stupid cheap packets of dog biscuits don’t have the picture of a dog on them. It is embarrassing when I flip through a picture book with a 1.5 year old Dane and he knows more words than I do. Now please don’t make it worse by treating me like a kid and handing me the appreciation oh say it again candy each time I say something right. My language skills may be lower than a 1.5 years old’s but I still have my dignity and my umm…age?
I am only giving the husband’s example because it is O.K to take the piss out of your husband. If I give examples of others who do the same, which is ALL Danes I have met so far, I will be called rude.
When we meet, the family asks, So do you understand a Danish yet? No I don’t, because its only been a WEEK since we last met. It takes longer to cook the annual Ox you guys grill at the city center. Danish unlike tenderly grilled Ox meat is a difficult not so tender language to learn. Oh now don’t give me that condescending we understand look. You don’t, you were born eating, sleeping, shitting, speaking Danish, you don’t know how difficult this language is. I am trying, in the meanwhile please stop asking me if I speak Danish yet. When I do, trust me you will hear from me.
This is so UNFAIR. I have to learn this difficult language and I don’t even get a exotic last name. You all know about the dick of a last name I got stuck with. I wish the husband had a fancy last name, maybe as a compensation for learning this difficult language. Y’ know the kind with those cute O with a slash, the orgy of the A with the E, the A with an Indian forehead dot.
If they ever give you hard time for not being able to understand them, or that they could understand a single word that is coming out from your mouth *say it with Chris Rock style in Rush Hour* ….tell them that they couldn’t even feckin understand each other, since they keep saying “hvad siger du” to each other.
Whenever I talk to a Danish people who send me a negative vibe and stare before she opens her mouth, I start up a psychological warfare by saying “hvad siger du” right after she finishes her sentence. See? It’s her who speaks unclear Danish, not me! *puffing herself*
Great tactic. I’ll copy you there.
I don’t want to scare you. But. Stage 2 in Learning Danish is putting up with people telling you your Danish is “rigtigt flot!” in a really insincere way usually reserved for pets who got it in the sandbox this time.
Sometimes people say it and it is sincere and you feel great for being praised but usually it’s the first sort and you want to smash things.
My Dansk will probably always remain rigtigt flotsam.
It’s not going to get any better. I advise you to get learning it now, and I mean now, take every class available and fully immerse yourself in learning it, get so perfect at it and affect a proper accent. Beat them at their own game.
Thing is, if you do it slowly or reluctantly you will end up giving up at some stage. If you do it slowly and expertly, you will be decultured in the process.
If you make a dedicated effort to learn how to speak Danish now then you will be that rare breed: a foreigner who speaks perfect Danish, who isn’t integrated.
Think about it! If we really want to get our own back on integrate-head-Danshish, what better revenge than being excellent in Denmark? How many perfect new Danish speakers do you know who can stand back and not bow to pressure here? The learning to speak Danish is intertwined with the integration/assimilation procedure, so it is also a joke that people ask all the time “Why are you not there yet?” It is supposed to take about a year before you are ‘finished’.
The latest people keep asking me is “Why haven’t you got Danish nationality yet?” That is the next thing, but you don’t get that until after a few more years. I reply “Because I’d rather be Italian.” which is very confusing.
You need to have your Danish to come on faster than your integration. Because if you take your time with it or take it easy, you will have to become a version of yourself.
Get it out of the way, get it perfect and THEN join the resistance!!! That is what Princess Mary is doing. She is quite obviously smashing the system from the inside. Or about to get obese.
The interesting thing I have found is that Danes really can’t understand what I am saying often because my Danish vocabulary includes very unused words, the higher brow ones, the more descriptive. In an effort to express myself properly in Danish I took to using a big English to Danish dictionary, which meant that I would put words in that would not normally be put in.
I have been having a conversation with Danes who have CORRECTED me for using ‘big words’..stopping me mid sentence and saying in patronising tone that I shouldn’t bother with the big words since I need to get the basics first, or even that the big words aren’t used and also that the big words don’t matter and that there is a much simpler way of talking.
Anyway, I hope that you WILL put more effort into Danish now, before you become integrated. Because then we will still have a kick ass spokewoman and not some pale carbon copy of one.
Like I say, being Danish is allll about the education you recieve and how many years you got it. When I decide if a person is Danish I don’t ask if they were born here, I ask if they went to school here. If a person is learning Danish subjects IN Danish for more than two to three years, chances are they will be as Danish as they get and only a strict deprogramming can save them.
You are bright! Do it quickly and intensely and then meet me at mine for a battle plan. LOL!!!
O cripes, I better watch what I say, I hear there is a rash of ‘preventative arrests’ going round.
For the battleplan… Can we form a union? Can we have flags? Pretty please! We can hang them ALLLL over the room, tuck one behind our ears like pretty summer flowers, stick it into the bowl of leverpostej and oh can we also have a a bowl of haribo candies on a formica table or maybe apples? Green.
Yesterday we went to the mall where we ran into Kenneth’s friends (an old couple). We exchanged conversation for a while where the wife asked me what was my plan and how I felt being here in Denmark. The husband mentioned about me learning Danish, which is expected…I don’t even take it as an annoyance anymore. I think they meant well and they really want us to visit them in their village.
I always ask the man to repeat several times until I get closer to the pronounciation. Hehe…he thinks I’m doing well but I highly doubt that. Good luck with learning Danish
I am so happy to know that things are going so well for you, that you ask your husband to repeat words till you get the pronounciation right, that you dont yell at him like I do. So glad you are not getting annoyed, hope you had a fabulous time at the mall. Which mall was it? Velkommen Til Danmark
Like you.. I’ve never been good at requesting (or accepting) help from my husband. Wait until you really get into the language.. then you’ll realize that unless he’s studied linguistics, he don’t know shit! (and my husband DID study linguistics!). Most Danes can’t answer/explain the most basic things about their language (don’t GET me started on those prepositions), cuz Danish is largely illogical. It comes with more and more exposure to it.. then you just get a SENSE for what is ‘right’.
Yes they probably meant well.
Keep on saying that, like a mantra.
@Verliz: I totally understand what you mean, I studied linguistics and languages for 2 years. My husband can’t even explain the language to me, which is natural as I can’t explain my mother tongues to people either.
@June: we went to Næstved storcenter. I don’t live in Copenhagen, we live an hour away by train from the capital.
Oh God June, you have conjured up memories of how it was like for me when I first came. I was taken aback how people expected me to speak their language immediately. And how everything was about them. They did not want to know about my culture, where I came from, etc. No siree, they wanted to know when I will start speaking like them, do i know how to make their kind of food, have i got a job here and have i started integrating.. oh it was horrible.
@Paula: Yep, and it never progresses beyond that, does it?
I normally agree with Babs, but fuck them and their ugly language. Seriously. Fuck ‘em. I’m 150% over and done with this bullshit tiny country.
I agree with Fuzzy. I now don’t speak Danish to anyone over infant age (and if so I do it in English first), or under older pensioner age.
I will speak Danish to the ‘Nydansker’ though, because they do need all the help they can get. Anyone calling themselves a nydansker, or allowing themselves to be called a nydansker needs all the help they can get and deserves to be spoken to exclusively in Danish. And made to wear the dannebrog as burka and sit on a shamechair and be pelted with the ‘madpakke’ leftovers from a ‘børnehave’. Yes, that means ryebread and green snot.
I am just advising this one fresh off the boat to be a spokeswoman for us, before she descends into stage 7 (sticking it to the Man). Think about it, a genius plan, we start training up a supergroup, highly educated and/or intelligent, totally unintegrated but able to speak fluent Danish with no accent. June’s good looking-ish too, which will also get us further.
Think of what we could do!!!!! it would be like having a twin sister and getting up to all manner of mischief without people realizing it.
I sure hope mine was a bananaboat as well. I hate carrotts. Goodlooking-ish? Damn! I dont meet the grade. OMG! its time for me to dye my hair blonde, run to the consol center and wear layers of black, grey and on a happy day an exciting shade of grey. That would help with the looks integration…now the accent, that might need some working on.
Have you read Asterix and the Great Crossing? How the Gauls keep butchering the pronounciation/accent by putting all the dots and slashes on the wrong letters? Hahaha…
Uff, you consider me capable of reading such great literature? Asterix? Calvin and Hobbes makes dahi of my dimaag. I am always wondering if there is a deeper meaning which I of course never get. I will read Asterix when I grow up.
Hi June.. I totally endorse what Babs and Eva are saying.. do it quickly and get it over with! I first met my sagsbehandler (caseworker) in August, and gushed on about all the kinda shit they want to hear, “Yes, I want to integrate as quickly as possible… I’m good with languages, I aDORE challenges, yadda yadda”. To crown it off, I declared, “And our NEXT meeting (October 1st) is going to be done fullly in Danish!”, to which I got the “Oh, okay, Good girl!” kinda reaction (with the disbelief barely held in check!” But.. guess what? The October interview WAS done in Danish, and she was like, “Jeg er så impoNEret over dig” (I’m so impressed with you), and blah blah blah. Now.. the only Danish I’d previously had was a “Teach Yourself Danish” book/cd by Bente Elsworth, and I absolutely reFUSE to speak Danish at home, so that made her even more impressed.. it was basically those 18 hrs/wk at school in my mixed-abilities class. (And please.. it wasn’t no 18 hours when we left each day at 1 instead of 2, and had multiple cofee breaks). So.. you can DO it!.. especialy if you’re alreadly multilingual and understand how to manipulate language!
BTW.. I started in Aug 2007 and could have done my exam in May 2008 if it wasn’t for that pesky newborn, and the stitches! So.. I opted for December 2008, instead. Oh.. and my school wasn’t any kinda fast-track school, either.. just a regular kommune-sponsored language center.
LOL
Well, that’s a nice way of phrasing it. I’m afraid I’m not as diplomatic as your husband and tend to say “What?”
My husband despairs that I cannot understand something unless it’s pronounced e-x-a-c-t-l-y right. That he seems to have the same difficulties with my Greek doesn’t count apparently. :p
And no, I still don’t think that I’m an idiot for not understanding “Ka bam ba se” the first time round.
But yeah, people expect you to learn with lightning speed. I remember when I lived in Switzerland and my husband’s friend said something in Swiss German to me. Now I knew it was a question because he went “blablablablabla blaaaa???”, but that was about it. I look to the husband for help and what does he say!!! “You may answer.” Oh how very noble of him. *snort*
LOL@ now you may answer. I am sure that was helpful.
I think you’d be better off speaking Greek to him then.
and we need a ‘ka bam ba se’ translation.
Is that like ruuudh gruddh med fleurghhh?
*lol*
“Ka bam ba se” is hubby’s version of “Der kan man bare se”.
And my Greek is sadly limited to names of food, “I don’t speak Greek”, “Where are you?”, “Shall we go” and something along the lines of “Excuse me, I’m constipated, where is the nearest pharmacy?” *grin*
LOL!! @Goodlookingish! Cruel. Totally below the belt. And that to a snazzy gal who totally kills the gladiator look.
And the Ø. I have it. Eat your heart out. Insert evil laugh now.
What REALLY pissed me off was the way someone in the husband’s family was sure to butt in if they overhead me talking to someone in the family in English with, “DU MÅ SNAKKE TIL HENNE PÅ NORSK!” WTF? I’ll talk in any language I please you gawddamn buttinski you. And this when you’re “finally” (read after 6 months or so!) having a half decent conversation about politics or fashion and NOT about the quality of herring or nutritional value of goat cheese.
I learnt to speak fluently in about six months. This turned the Norwegians on so much that I was in the newspaper and they probably named a crazy sexual position after me. Me being from the land of kamasutra and all.
But I’m with Babs. Knock their socks off with your skills!
LOL! and WOW! 6 months?! But really as Paula commented, surprisingly no one asks me about India, not even about Elephants. The questions are always about if I am learning Danish, if I know what Herrring is, if I like it, how very soon I will be doing things the Danish way. Its hard to get angry or snarky coz sometimes its from people I like and they say it in the most sincere well meaning way. In OUR country if we see firangs we totally ask them things about their country and if they totally walk around naked and do sex all the time. We dont ask them if the curry is giving them diarrhea.
Wheee! you got the be in papers coz you spoke Norwegian in 6 months! I have a name for a Kamasutra position in your name, but I wont post it here since it will give away your name.
@ Era: You speak in ENGLISH! Do you even know who cool that is?
LOL!! You are mailing me PRONTO with the name of the kamasutra position!! Y’hear?
I feel sad and left out. I don’t speak Dansk or Norsk
Era, why hon? If you spoke these not so cute languages, who would be the hot caribbean calypso queen here? Huh? Answer me that.
You get a big hug for saying that!
@ Era and MGM.. we have aNOther hot, Caribbean calypso queen here? God dammit.. Just when I leave the bloody country!!
It’s always difficult learning a new language.
I gots me one of those cool little ø’s, although given that I work for an internet company and know how these things tend to work, I view it as a bit more of a pain as most website and programs out there can’t recognize the character. So, I looked at my dane’s passport and at the bottom strip, it’s spelled oe, and that’s what I use on any site where I have to type the name.
Not that you cared about any of that – I’m just babbling!