{"id":3831,"date":"2011-07-14T11:56:50","date_gmt":"2011-07-14T11:56:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/?p=3831"},"modified":"2011-07-18T17:58:50","modified_gmt":"2011-07-18T17:58:50","slug":"danish-for-swedes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/danish-for-swedes\/","title":{"rendered":"Danish. For Swedes."},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m spending my summer in Denmark, trying to learn Danish. Which is not Swedish. It\u2019s close, but not close enough as I am realizing more and more as the days go by. So this post will not be about Swedish. At least, not specifically. It will be about Danish. Or at least about learning a Scandinavian language. (By the way, if you\u2019re interested in learning more about Danish check out the Transparent Danish blog<\/a> and the Transparent Danish on Facebook<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t attempted to learn a language since four years of French in high school. By my senior year I was adequate at best. I could make myself understood and understand a decent amount. I could even watch the news and get the gist of what was going on. Today, I\u2019m excited when I pick out a few words in French. That\u2019s what happens after years of non-use. But all the while, my Swedish continued to improve, not because I ever took formal classes, but because my father kept babbling on in Swedish and I moved to Stockholm. That informal way of improving on an already solid base of language served me well. In the meantime though, I forgot just what a challenge it was to learn a new language. Which is unfortunate, because I teach Swedish to beginning students.<\/p>\n

So when the opportunity came to learn another language, I chose Danish. It\u2019s close to Swedish. At least in written form. It is the oral and aural skills that I struggle with though. In fact, many Swedish speakers have an especially hard time with the Danish pronunciation. There are several reasons for this. One is linguistic, like the use of glottal stops to differentiate between words, hun and hund for example. They sound so very similar in Danish aside from the glottal stop at the end. It\u2019s a challenge for students of the language, not just Swedes. Another challenge though is mental. And it seems to be very much reserved for Swedish speakers.<\/p>\n

Because the languages are so similar, it is difficult to train your mouth, your tongue, your head, to attempt those glottal stops. Or the guttural r. Or the apocope so common in Danish. It just sounds, well, wrong. It\u2019s not. At least not in Danish, but to someone who has grown up speaking Swedish, it flies in the face of Swedish pronunciation. One teacher explained it as a sort of existential crisis. The idea being that by applying Danish pronunciation, a Swedish speaker is in essence bastardizing their own language. They aren\u2019t, but the longer I try to pronounce \u201cR\u00f8dgr\u00f8d med fl\u00f8de,\u201d the more I appreciate that sentiment.<\/p>\n

I figured that learning Danish would be a great way to remind myself of the difficulties of learning another language, while also immersing myself even more in Scandinavian culture. I was right. This has given me a new-found respect for the student sin my first year Swedish class who looked at me in horror when I walked in the first day and started prattling on in Swedish.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a challenge learning Danish, just like it\u2019s a challenge learning any language. It\u2019s also an absolutely amazing way to spend the summer. But this isn\u2019t the Danish blog, this is Swedish. So tell me, what do you find most challenging when learning Swedish? Is it the pronunciation? The vocabulary? The grammar? Or is it something else?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m spending my summer in Denmark, trying to learn Danish. Which is not Swedish. It\u2019s close, but not close enough as I am realizing more and more as the days go by. So this post will not be about Swedish. At least, not specifically. It will be about Danish. Or at least about learning a…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3079],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3831","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-swedish-language"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3831"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8181,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3831\/revisions\/8181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}