Santa Lucia Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Dec 13, 2011
Lights off. Everyone is fidgetting in anticipation, stealing glimpses of friends’ silhouettes in the dusk of the room. Suddenly a clear note breaks the silence, then another; the ringing sound of young girls’ voices echoes through the shadows and becomes a song: Nu bæres lyset frem… Now the light is carried forth… Enters the choir, five…
EN or ET: The Peculiar Sex Life of Danish Nouns Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Dec 8, 2011
Danish nouns have genders. If English is your only language, that claim may seem just a wee bit absurd: Do Danish vocabulary items come with sex organs, or what?! In case you’ve got some basic acquaintance with French, Spanish, German or perhaps Latin, you certainly know that grammatical gender and biological gender are two…
(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)…
There Be Adjectives! Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Nov 30, 2011
We’ve already seen how to pluralize nouns (by adding an -er, -e, -s or no ending at all, remember?) Furthermore, we’ve taken a sneak peek at the article system. Basically, that one boils down to adding en or et to any singular noun – as a lead word in front if it is to mean ’a’ or…
O, Christmas Where Art Thou! Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Nov 27, 2011
Today’s got a name in Danish: den første søndag i advent. (Yeah, you got it right: the first Sunday in Advent!) Advent, of course, is the countdown for jul (Christmas). Today many families are lighting the first out of four candles in their adventskrans (advent wreath). Over the next three Sundays the remaining lys (candles)…
Articles Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Nov 24, 2011
You already know how to make plurals of Danish nouns. Now the time has come to say hello to the Danish articles, they’re already tripping outside in the raw November weather, anxious to be let in… What’s an article? Besides the stuff journalists write, it’s a way for some languages to mark whether a noun…
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…