{"id":165,"date":"2011-09-29T11:47:09","date_gmt":"2011-09-29T11:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/?p=165"},"modified":"2011-09-29T12:05:58","modified_gmt":"2011-09-29T12:05:58","slug":"learning-danish-through-english","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/2011\/09\/29\/learning-danish-through-english\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning Danish through English"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pecan<\/a>

This is \u2019Danish\u2019 to many people in the US and UK! And in fact, if you\u2019re an English speaker, learning Danish may be just as easy as eating one\u2026<\/p><\/div>Having a hard time learning Spanish? Wrestling with Chinese? Learn Danish<\/a>! \ud83d\ude42<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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\nJeg er f@cking ligeglad med alt dit crap!<\/strong>\u00a0I don\u2019t give a f@cking damn about all your crap!<\/em>\u00a0Modern Danish slang sometimes sounds like a bad Hollywood rip-off\u2026 In Denmark you start learning English in fjerde klasse<\/strong>\u00a0(the fourth grade), when you\u2019re just 10 or even 9 years old. English continues to be one of the most important school subjects, and if you\u2019re considering higher education in Denmark, you\u2019re bound to get your brain soaked in English. I\u2019ve got anthropologist friends who hardly read one word of Danish in their university studies! Add to this our love of language-mixing ordspil<\/strong>\u00a0(wordplay), English humour and American films and music, and you might start wondering why Danish still exists\u2026 At least you can avoid arriving in Denmark with your head full of H.C. Andersen<\/strong>, only to get a nervous breakdown each time a benevolent Dane is replying you with an okay<\/strong>!<\/p>\n

There\u2019s however another reason to this Danglish<\/strong>: English and Danish are very similar languages! An English word can enter Danish quite easily because it fits quite well. (At least better than in a more distant language like Arabic or Japanese \u2013 the Japanese transform ice-cream<\/em>\u00a0to aisukurami<\/em>, while in Danish we quite happily say\u00a0softice<\/strong>.)<\/p>\n

Danish grammar is close to the grammar you already know from English. The infamous Danish pronunciation \u2013 which makes foreigneres joke about Danes having a \u201dthroat disease\u201d or talking with \u201dpotatoes\u201d in their mouths \u2013 isn\u2019t that far away from some dialects in England (the ones where they \u201dcough\u201d the tt<\/em> of butter<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Here are some of the Danish niceties which you already know from English:<\/p>\n