Archive by Author
A Kingdom for a Ball Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Oct 11, 2011
Spirits are high in Danish barer and værtshuse (pubs) tonight, as well as in countless stuer (homely sitting rooms), where hr. og fru Danmark (the typical Danish family, literally ’Mr and Mrs Denmark’) have just left the television set to fetch something to toast with: Denmark just beat Portugal 2–1! Of course we’re talking about football, that…
Woman in charge Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Oct 5, 2011
Yesterday Denmark had its Obama moment. Or perhaps rather Hillary moment, as Helle Thorning-Schmidt, winner of the recent September elections, mounted the talerstol (rostrum) of Folketinget (the Danish Parliament) and delivered her åbningstale (inaugurational speech) as the first female statsminister (prime minister) in the history of Denmark. Although the audience – consisting of VIPs like…
Days of the Week Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Oct 2, 2011
Mandag (pronounced ’manda’). This is the first day of the week in Denmark – and most of Europe, for that matter. The American habit of putting Sundays first in calendars looks weird to Danes. You can’t start the week relaxing, you know, it takes some toil before you merit that weekend! Mandag looks like…
Learning Danish through English Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Sep 29, 2011
Having a hard time learning Spanish? Wrestling with Chinese? Learn Danish! 🙂 Jeg er f@cking ligeglad med alt dit crap! I don’t give a f@cking damn about all your crap! Modern Danish slang sometimes sounds like a bad Hollywood rip-off… In Denmark you start learning English in fjerde klasse (the fourth grade), when you’re just 10 or even…
September Blues Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Sep 23, 2011
Whenever you catch a tog (train) or bus in Denmark, you are sure to encounter a number of people with white Apple earbuds in their ears, relaxing to much of the same r’n’b and pop music as the rest of the (Western) world. However, the Danes have a very rich song tradition themselves. While the classic vise/r ([folk]…
Counting in Danish Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Sep 14, 2011
Trouble falling asleep? Counting får (sheep) in Danish might just do the trick! For one thing, the Danish words for 50, 60, 70, 80 and 90 are much less transparent than the fif-ty, six-ty, seven-ty, eigh-ty, nine-ty row of English – and so it goes when comparing them with a lot of other languages too…
Talking about the weather Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Sep 11, 2011
Danes love talking about vejret (the weather). I recently had a chat with a guy who’d been spending some time down under — he was really surprised that the Australians he’d met hardly ever talked about the weather! That made him realize, he told me, just how much people ”up here” discuss things like regn…