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Months of the Year Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Jan 12, 2012
Like the days of the week, months are easy in Danish – provided your language is English or one of the other (European) tongues that have taken over the names from the Romans! Don’t worry, there are no Latin endings left in the Danish version… In fact, the month names can’t be inflected at all…
Those Pretty Letters 3 Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Dec 31, 2011
Å is the all-Scandinavian letter. It is found in the alphabets of Swedish, Norwegian and Danish, where it sounds more or less like the O of languages like Italian or Spanish. If that confuses you, just imagine that Å’s are A’s that have been O’ed! Historically, the Å’s were long A’s. In Icelandic, these long…
Those Pretty Letters 2 Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Dec 30, 2011
If letters had a national identity, Ø would doubtless be Miss Denmark. Æ is shared with the Norwegians and Icelanders and indeed the whole world in fancy ways of writing Latin words (Cæsar, right?) Å just recently found its place in the Danish alphabet, and is still often written ’Aa’ in placenames, such as Aalborg…
Those Pretty Letters 1 Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Dec 29, 2011
We’ll celebrate the close of 2011 by taking a closer look at the three special characters of Danish. Some readers will find this a bit geeky – but hey, you’re learning Danish, isn’t that quite offbeat already?! The first to go is Æ. Recently I took a train which I suspect DSB – Danske Statsbaner…
(Wet) Winter Wonderland Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Dec 6, 2011
OMG! Det sner! (It’s snowing!) Yesterday afternoon, delicate, tiny snefnug (snowflake[s]) came on a surprise visit several steder (places) in Denmark, whirling through the fresh luft (air) like white confetti. It melted to cold water on pedestrians’ faces, and made the cars’ vinduesviskere (windscreen wipers) run wild… In my region, Eastern Central Jutland, the very glat (slippery)…
Basic Geography of Denmark Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Nov 18, 2011
Denmark seen from foreign land looks but like a grain of sand famously wrote Danish poet Piet Hein (1905-1996), before admitting Denmark as we Danes conceive it is so big you won’t believe it! True enough, area-wise Danmark ranks among the world’s smaller countries, with just 43 thousand square kilometres of dry land (about 16…
Why Denmark? Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Oct 28, 2011
I’ve already given you some pretty good reasons to learn Danish. (Which I hope you’re now devoting huge parts of your spare time to! 😉 ) Whatever your motivation to learn the language, I feel that I ought to tell you why you should care about Denmark. Why do I spend so many posts writing…