{"id":186,"date":"2011-10-13T10:40:15","date_gmt":"2011-10-13T10:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/?p=186"},"modified":"2011-10-13T10:46:51","modified_gmt":"2011-10-13T10:46:51","slug":"ord-is-word-learning-danish-through-english-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/2011\/10\/13\/ord-is-word-learning-danish-through-english-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Ord is Word! Learning Danish Through English Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Amalienborg.1\"<\/a>

Queen Margrethe\u2019s Royal Life Guards in Copenhagen wear bj\u00f8rneskindshuer \u2013 bearskins \u2013 just like their British colleagues at Queen Elizabeth\u2019s London quarters.<\/p><\/div>I recently got a reaction<\/a> to my claim that Danish is an easy language to learn for native speakers of English. I can understand that for a new learner who has just started looking at the language, this may seem to be taken out of the blue. It certainly also makes sense to me that listening to a couple of Danes jabbering away in a stream of indistinguishable vowel shades may very well make you reach out for the panic button: Oh my, how am I EVER going to learn this language?<\/p>\n

But please do take a look in your dictionary, and you\u2019ll find just so many words you already learnt as a small child, only \u201ddressed\u201d in different spellings:<\/p>\n

allerede<\/strong> \u2013 already
\nbegynde<\/strong> \u2013 begin
\ndag<\/strong> \u2013 day
\ngr\u00f8n<\/strong> \u2013 green
\nbl\u00e5<\/strong> \u2013 blue<\/p>\n

r\u00f8d <\/strong>\u2013 red<\/p>\n

gr\u00e5<\/strong> \u2013 grey\/gray<\/p>\n

hvid<\/strong> \u2013 white
\nbrun<\/strong> \u2013 brown
\n\u00f8je<\/strong> \u2013 eye
\nse<\/strong> \u2013 see
\nn\u00e6se<\/strong> \u2013 nose
\n\u00f8re<\/strong> \u2013 ear
\nh\u00f8re<\/strong> \u2013 hear
\ntunge<\/strong> \u2013 tounge
\nspyt<\/strong> \u2013 spit (the substance)
\nlunge<\/strong> \u2013 lung
\narm<\/strong> \u2013 arm
\nh\u00e5nd<\/strong> \u2013 hand
\nfinger<\/strong> \u2013 finger
\nring<\/strong> \u2013 ring (like a fingerring<\/strong>)
\nkn\u00e6<\/strong> \u2013 knee (but in Danish the \u2019k\u2019 is still pronounced!)
\ng\u00e5<\/strong> \u2013 go
\nbryst<\/strong> \u2013 breast
\nh\u00e5r<\/strong> \u2013 hair
\ntage<\/strong> \u2013 take
\nhave<\/strong> \u2013 have (in spoken Danish, the last two are usually shortened to ha\u2019 <\/strong>and ta\u2019<\/strong>)
\nf\u00f8le<\/strong> \u2013 feel
\nt\u00e6nke<\/strong> \u2013 think
\nsynge<\/strong> \u2013 sing
\nsang<\/strong> \u2013 song
\nbage<\/strong> \u2013 bake
\nbager<\/strong> \u2013 baker
\nkage<\/strong> \u2013 cake
\nfisker<\/strong> \u2013 fisher
\nvi\u00a0kan<\/strong> \u2013 we can
\nvi<\/strong> m\u00e5<\/strong> \u2013 we may
\nvi<\/strong>\u00a0vil<\/strong>\u00a0danse<\/strong> \u2013 we\u2019ll dance<\/strong> (in the future)
\nbroder<\/strong> \u2013 brother
\nmoder<\/strong> \u2013 mother
\nfader<\/strong> \u2013 father (these last three are usually shortened to bror<\/strong>, mor<\/strong> and far<\/strong>)
\ns\u00f8ster<\/strong> \u2013 sister
\nfamilie<\/strong> \u2013 family (OK, this one\u2019s a cheater: Both English and Danish borrowed the word from French\u2026)
\nkat<\/strong> \u2013 cat
\nko<\/strong> \u2013 cow
\nm\u00e6lk<\/strong> \u2013 milk
\nsvin<\/strong> \u2013 swine
\norm<\/strong> \u2013 worm
\ntr\u00e6<\/strong> \u2013 tree
\nl\u00f8v<\/strong> \u2013 leaves (foliage)
\ngr\u00e6s<\/strong> \u2013 grass
\nplante<\/strong> \u2013 plant (cheater as well, I guess the word comes from Latin\u2026)
\nhus<\/strong> \u2013 house
\nd\u00f8r<\/strong> \u2013 door
\nvindue<\/strong> \u2013 window
\nkniv<\/strong> \u2013 knife
\n\u00e6g<\/strong> \u2013 egg (these last three words were actually left by the Vikings in England!)
\nh\u00e5rd<\/strong> \u2013 hard
\nlang<\/strong> \u2013 long
\nbred<\/strong> \u2013 broad
\nlille<\/strong> \u2013 little (think about Li\u2019l<\/em> Kim!)<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s also the words who look similar but have a slightly different meaning (as they are helpful too I\u2019d rather not label them \u2019false friends\u2019):<\/p>\n

hund<\/strong> \u2013 \u2019dog\u2019 in the general sense, not just \u2019hound\u2019
\nfugl<\/strong> \u2013 \u2019bird\u2019 as well as \u2019fowl\u2019
\nmad<\/strong> \u2013 \u2019food\u2019 of all kinds, including \u2019meat\u2019<\/p>\n

Of course, the pronunciation<\/em><\/strong><\/span> is quite another story\u2026
\nBut at least learning the basic STRUCTURE of Danish shouldn\u2019t be that frightening. In a future post we\u2019ll be looking of some of the grammatical similarities between Danish and English.<\/p>\n

Now you go home and try to make a similar list of everyday word-twins between English (not Latin, that\u2019s cheating!) and Spanish, then Arabic, Japanese\u2026 \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

I recently got a reaction to my claim that Danish is an easy language to learn for native speakers of English. I can understand that for a new learner who has just started looking at the language, this may seem to be taken out of the blue. It certainly also makes sense to me that…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":2126,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vocabulary"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":189,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions\/189"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}