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Old 06-29-2010, 06:38 PM   #91
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Excellent idea

Well it's not really my language, but my adopted language has 28 or 29 letters, it adds three extra letters to the standard Roman "English" alphabet - æ ø å. In a dictionary the come in that order after -z-. The reason that it's uncertain whether there are 28 or 29 letters in the alphabet - according to my Danish teacher - is that there are no Danish words with -w- so although you will see -w- written in Denmark all the words featuring a -w- are imported words. So Danish itself doesn't have a -w- therefore, the argument goes -w- is not part of the Danish alphabet.

You think that's complicated, you want to try pronouncing it!
It helps if you've grown up here

I haven't actually ever thought about if there's 28 or 29 letters - I've just been taught there's 28. I've seen V and W categorised as the same letter in libraries (don't know if it's common).

'æ' and 'ø' are actually from medieval times - transcriptions of 'ae' and 'oe'.

An interesting thing is that we actually have two 'ø' wovel sounds. I think they correspond to the 'eu' and 'oe' sounds in French. TGS; try to pronounce 'løve' and 'høne' (lion and hen).

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...

I did listen to the Danish words though, and if the software works as it should, I am shocked and fascinated by "rødgrød med fløde" and whoever manages to pronounce it! Wow!

This made me remember an interesting study that I had watched in a documentary, and I managed to find a relevant article. Experiments have shown that as babies we can recognise all the little nuances in sound and differentiate between them. We lose however this ability very early on: As we are getting better and better in our native language's sounds, we start ignoring the rest.
...

So when two foreign words sound exactly the same to you, while a native speaker insists that they are totally different, you now know why. This doesn't explain why some people manage to have very convincing accents in foreign languages later in life, while others never can, though. A (musical) friend suggested once to me that it has to do something with having a musical ear, but I'm not sure. I'm rubbish at music, myself, but probably better than average in accents.
the 'soft' d is really just the 'th' sound spoken very softly. If you notice the configuration of your moth and tongue while pronouncing it, you just need to push your tongue a little closer to the teeth (almost touch them).

About sounds; I read recently that Arabic languages has 3 wovel sounds, Spanish has 5, English has 14, German has 21 - and Danish has 24 or 25. It's no wonder that it can be a difficult language to learn.

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The relationship between the language we use and the way we carve up the world - the categories we use - is fascinating. Prepositions are one of the weirdest language features and the way the prepositions in English do not quite map on to the prepositions in Danish cause me as a non-native Danish speaker, and the Danish people I teach English to no end of problems. English has far more prepositions than Danish and uses them in weird ways - why might you be "on" a bus but "in" a car for example, but in Danish be "på" a bus and also be be "på" work (if you ask Google på translates as "at")?
Yep! That's one of my main problems (and remembering that verbs in third person singular is different - don't vs. doesn't). For example, I've had to memorise you sit at the table, not by the table (if I remember right...)

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Originally Posted by FlorenceArt View Post
...

It looks like in this matter, France is following in the steps of Scandinavia and, more recently, Germany. My sister lived in Denmark for a few months, and she told me that nobody uses the equivalent of "tu" any longer, except when talking to the King (which incidentally my sister didn't do ). And I seem to see "Du" in German used much more often than "tu" in French, on magazine covers or ads, or here in the MR forum.
Ah... It's the other way round. We "tu-er" ("du") each other and rarely use the equivalent for ''vous" ("De") (except royalty of course). And unless your sister was in Denmark prior to 1972, she would have had not even a theoretical chance to speak with the king (unless she's medium) - since the old king died then, and our current monarch is a queen

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Danish has a word "hyggelig" (which is pronounced something like "who'kerly" would be in English - if you can imagine that), which so far as I can tell has no equivalent in any language. The meaning of the word has something to do with atmosphere - it is often translated as cosy, but that's not quite right, it is broader than cosy. One can be hyggelig sitting with friends on a hot summer day drinking a few beers. One can also be hyggelig alone - imagine getting home on a dark cold winter evening, your house is warm, you make some hot chocolate, light some candles, wrap yourself up in a blanket, take out you liseuse and become pleasurably absorbed in reading - that's hyggelig. One can be hyggelig at a big party, or a small dinner. The pursuit of hyggelig, creating hyggelig, finding occasions for hyggelig seems to underpin much of life in Denmark.

I'm not sure if any of our Danish colleagues are contributing to this thread, but if they are maybe they have a go at defining it. Ultimately I think it is a word which, if you are Danish you know what it means, but if you are not Danish you will never really get it.
I think you got it quite right. Cosy covers some of it, but it's also generally about having a nice time in whatever way you want. It can also be said with a "nudge-nudge, wink-wink" inflection. It's a thoroughly positive word - I can't think of a negative use for it. And 'hygge' is a very 'democratic' notion (not sure how to explain this, but it feels like it. Wealth or rank would never enter into an explanation of hygge.

TGS, do you know the song "Svante's lykkelige dag" by Benny Andersen? that's very much about 'hygge' (btw, 'hygge' is the noun, and 'hyggelig' is ... can't remember the term, sorry - you're the language teacher... )
Here's the song, sung by Povl Dissing (who was rather controversial back in the 70's because of his style - you either hate him or love him - but it's really just blues-style):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhrPg...eature=related

The refrain in translation:
Life is not the worst that one got,
And in a little while the coffee will be ready.

(edit, note: he uses 'life'(livet) or 'happiness'/'luck'(lykken) or 'joy'(glæden) in different stanzas)

That is hygge at an advanced level.
(the Scandinavian countries are in the top three with regards coffee consumption per capita world-wide... coffee is very much hygge - and food and alcohol, too - eating and drinking together...)

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Originally Posted by Freeshadow View Post
ArcticBoy, you reminded me of something i once heared about Swedish and Danish: it was the statement that a swedish-speaker would be able to understand danish but not the other way around.
It's probably both ways. I've heard from both Norwegians and Swedes that they find Danish difficult, because we do inflections (I think it's called) in a rather unique way. There's not a lot of ups and downs in the sound of Danish, and few obvious stops, so to a foreign ear, it sound rather like lots of mumbling.

Instead, in Danish, 'stød' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St%C3%B8d), a sort of glottal stop or stress on parts of words, is used as a kind of inflection. This is probably the hardest part of Danish for a foreigner to learn, and unless we get them from and early age, they rarely manage Seriously, almost all who've learned Danish as adults will never get this quite right, even if their general pronunciation are good and they can pronounce "rødgrød med fløde"
Edit, added: Germans can get it 'right', and Dutch come right behind them
Edit 2: I wrote "...their general pronunciation is good..." - fecking English third person singular... LOL

Last edited by Ea; 06-29-2010 at 07:01 PM.
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Old 06-29-2010, 07:01 PM   #92
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An interesting thing is that we actually have two 'ø' wovel sounds. I think they correspond to the 'eu' and 'oe' sounds in French. TGS; try to pronounce 'løve' and 'høne' (lion and hen).
My reference for the sound of "ø" is øl, so that would be the same sound as løve?

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Yep! That's one of my main problems (and remembering that verbs in third person singular is different - don't vs. doesn't). For example, I've had to memorise you sit at the table, not by the table (if I remember right...)
Yes, and remember to put the water on to make some tea - not over


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Originally Posted by Ea View Post
(btw, 'hygge' is the noun, and 'hyggelig' is ... can't remember the term, sorry - you're the language teacher... )
Adjective - tillægsord?

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Originally Posted by Ea View Post
Here's the song, sung by Povl Dissing (who was rather controversial back in the 70's because of his style - you either hate him or love him - but it's really just blues-style):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhrPg...eature=related

The refrain in translation:
Life is not the worst that one got,
And in a little while the coffee will be ready.

(edit, note: he uses 'life'(livet) or 'luck'(lykken) or 'joy'(glæden) in different stanzas)
I love Povl Dissing, and given that I don't know what he's on about most of the time it must be his "unique" delivery that attracts me.

I did hear that on the west coast of Jylland they put the article before the noun - et bord instead of bordet. Now this seems very sensible to me - maybe I should go and live in Hovvig - then all I would have to do is sort out my en words from my et words and I would be fluent (not!)
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Old 06-29-2010, 07:30 PM   #93
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My reference for the sound of "ø" is øl, so that would be the same sound as løve?
Yes. Somehow - don't quite understand why... - but get the feeling you're already very well integrated into Danish society... hmm!
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Yes, and remember to put the water on to make some tea - not over
Don't think I've made that mistake - but it's an obvious one since you say 'over' in Danish.

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Adjective - tillægsord?
Yes! That was it Thanks.



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I love Povl Dissing, and given that I don't know what he's on about most of the time it must be his "unique" delivery that attracts me.
I had to get used to his style, but now I love it. He's so expressive, and his live performances are really good. I saw Dissing and Benny Andersen last Autumn - classic Andersen songs (I like Benny Andersen a good deal - a great poet, wonderfully accessible - like Jeppe Aakjær)

I saw this review recently, might interest you: http://ibyen.dk/musik/cd-jazz/article985798.ece (if you've bought it, tell me if it's worth buying)

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I did hear that on the west coast of Jylland they put the article before the noun - et bord instead of bordet. Now this seems very sensible to me - maybe I should go and live in Hovvig - then all I would have to do is sort out my en words from my et words and I would be fluent (not!)
Yees... but they don't really use genders (technically yes, but not in practise). It's just "æ' bord" ("æ' bouer"), "æ' stol" ("æ' stul") etc.

BTW, you do put the article before the noun anywhere in Denmark when it's "ubestemt" - but of course they do it in any case in western Jutland.

A fun fact for you: an old western jutland dialect word for horse, is... "hors". I think that word has Germanic roots, so it might be an 'old survivor' in an evolving language.

Did you know I only learned a few years ago - and only beacuse I'm interested in languages and stumbled across it on Wikipedia - that Danish has genders. We don't learn this fact in school. We're just expected to know.

Oh, TGS, get this one: "U'e å' e' ø, i e' å." - I was taught this in Northern Jutland. What does it say, translated into standard Danish?
I think this is sort of "better" than "rødgrød med fløde" (read: harder) - LOL - but those softies in Eastern Denmark can't do it either
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Old 06-30-2010, 12:51 AM   #94
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About sounds; I read recently that Arabic languages has 3 wovel sounds, Spanish has 5, English has 14, German has 21 - and Danish has 24 or 25. It's no wonder that it can be a difficult language to learn.
Wow, my IPA chart shows 28 vowel sounds all together! I'm sure I can't identify all my 14, let alone distinguish or produce them all. BTW, Italian has the same 5 vowels as Spanish, all open-throated, which is why everybody likes to sing in Italian. The hardest part for English singers is to keep the vowels pure.
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Old 06-30-2010, 04:00 AM   #95
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Oh, TGS, get this one: "U'e å' e' ø, i e' å." - I was taught this in Northern Jutland. What does it say, translated into standard Danish?
I think this is sort of "better" than "rødgrød med fløde" (read: harder) - LOL - but those softies in Eastern Denmark can't do it either
A wild guess - does it have something to do with ducks and rivers? It reminds me a of the phrase from the north-east of England "oyer rammer ower 'ere" which means... would you pass me that hammer. Another, probably apocryphal, story is that people from the north west of Jutland and people from the north east of England can pretty much understand each other if they are each speaking in their own dialect.
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Old 06-30-2010, 04:54 AM   #96
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Wow, my IPA chart shows 28 vowel sounds all together! I'm sure I can't identify all my 14, let alone distinguish or produce them all. BTW, Italian has the same 5 vowels as Spanish, all open-throated, which is why everybody likes to sing in Italian. The hardest part for English singers is to keep the vowels pure.
Sorry - I didn't remember that correctly It's 17 sounds for German and 21 or 22 for Danish. Still a lot though

I've also heard that Spanish is relatively easy to learn, because it's pronounced fairly much the way it's spelled/written - in comparison with e.g. French (or Danish, for that matter).
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Old 06-30-2010, 05:07 AM   #97
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A wild guess - does it have something to do with ducks and rivers? It reminds me a of the phrase from the north-east of England "oyer rammer ower 'ere" which means... would you pass me that hammer. Another, probably apocryphal, story is that people from the north west of Jutland and people from the north east of England can pretty much understand each other if they are each speaking in their own dialect.
It could also have been written: "U'e å' æ' ø, i æ' å." ("Ude på øen, i åen." - "Out on the island, in the stream/river.") You got the second part right

It was your mention putting the article in the front of the noun - what really sets Western Jutland apart, is that they they don't use genders either - just 'æ' instead of 'en' or 'et'. I find find genders in other languages confusing, too.

... "oyer rammer ower 'ere" ... you just have to love dialects (unless you need to understand them ). There as this French movie from last year I think, about a man, a postal employee, forced to move from the south to the north - they made a lot out of the fact that the local dialect is supposed to be incomprehensible.

That other story you mention, is probably apocryphal, but a lot of place names have survived in that area of England from the Viking age, from the time of Danelaw. And there's Scottish dialect words, which I guess has common roots with Old Norse and that can be found in modern Scandinavian languages. For example, 'kirk' - 'kirke' (church), 'bairn' - 'barn' (child).

But there's an old Scottish dialect (as far as I remember), that's pretty close to Old Norse. I've heard an English teacher of mine, who could speak Old Norse, converse in that tongue with a Scottish guest teacher, who could speak that old dialect.
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Old 06-30-2010, 09:48 AM   #98
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Danish has a word "hyggelig" (which is pronounced something like "who'kerly" would be in English - if you can imagine that), which so far as I can tell has no equivalent in any language. The meaning of the word has something to do with atmosphere - it is often translated as cosy, but that's not quite right, it is broader than cosy. One can be hyggelig sitting with friends on a hot summer day drinking a few beers. One can also be hyggelig alone - imagine getting home on a dark cold winter evening, your house is warm, you make some hot chocolate, light some candles, wrap yourself up in a blanket, take out you liseuse and become pleasurably absorbed in reading - that's hyggelig. One can be hyggelig at a big party, or a small dinner. The pursuit of hyggelig, creating hyggelig, finding occasions for hyggelig seems to underpin much of life in Denmark.
Oh, you mean chillax!
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Old 06-30-2010, 02:11 PM   #99
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@arcticboy
haven't known that swedish-finnish is different from genuine s. thx nice fact

@ea
the germans might have less trouble with ø because of their ö and ü
I'd even dare to assume that cultural connections between norse and celtic culture are older than what you named. (altough the facts you presented astonished me)
as far as this goes it would be quite interesting to compare irish and icelandic understanding and definition of elves.
btw. irish is one of the languages, where i dare not to make any guesses on the spelling based on the transcription
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Old 06-30-2010, 03:37 PM   #100
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Oh, you mean chillax!
Not quite...probably. But I'm not Danish I just live here so I can't claim to understand the finer points of hygge!
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Old 06-30-2010, 05:36 PM   #101
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Oh, you mean chillax!
I'm afraid that's a too narrow definition. I think at the core of "hygge" you find "to enjoy yourself". From the descriptions in your link I'd say "chillaxing" describes probably half of what "hygge", but it's more, and difficult to define. Perhaps it's better to describe what it isn't.
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Old 06-30-2010, 05:56 PM   #102
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@ea
the germans might have less trouble with ø because of their ö and ü
I'd even dare to assume that cultural connections between norse and celtic culture are older than what you named. (altough the facts you presented astonished me)
as far as this goes it would be quite interesting to compare irish and icelandic understanding and definition of elves.
btw. irish is one of the languages, where i dare not to make any guesses on the spelling based on the transcription
No, it' wasn't the wovels - the French can pronounce 'ø' well, too. It was more that Germans seem to get the "tone" of the language right. Of all, they seem to be able to manage the "stød" and can learn Danish in a manner where it's really difficult to distinguish them from native speakers.

I agree that cultural connections in the North Atlantic area are older than the viking age - that was just a big expansion in a short time period. The Angles and Saxons for example are from from the current southern Scandinavia and northern Germany**. And earlier on they must have travelled some, as well, but the Scandinavians didn't travel far and wide until the Viking age, because they didn't have the proper ships. In our time we do tend to think in ages and delineations, when at that time they were just people and cultural exchange would have happened naturally.

With regards to the Icelandic definition of elves, to me, I tend to see Iceland as having been somewhat culturally isolated and thus they've preserved beliefs that's been watered out and replaced further south in Scandinavia. Just like their language. How can I put it? To me, the Icelandic understanding of elves, is just a (purer) expression of beliefs in the supernatural than the rest of Scandinavia, but it's a pan-scandinavian belief overall. As, I guess, we could talk of a northern celtic culture, etc. - but of course Christianity appeared earlier in Britain and less knowledge of the older cultures are left.

What facts astonished you BTW - just curious

**and I kinda think it's a fun fact that the Normans were descendants of Swedish and Danish viking settlers in France. They were fully "French" at the time of course, but still
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Old 06-30-2010, 06:59 PM   #103
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What facts astonished you BTW - just curious
the coverage of old dialects: gaelic and ancient norse, but now as i dug deeper into wikipedia I wonder less. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norse-Gaels

As the french are concerned: it shall not be forgotten, their share in this cultural jigsaw-puzzle is the bretagne

you might find a book called "the druids" by jean markale worth reading, but I assume all that I'm telling is no real news for a witch.
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Old 07-02-2010, 10:45 AM   #104
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I would think all languages have a word for yes and no
Well, my family language, which is Scottish Gaelic, has no words for yes and no.

In Gaelic, you answer a question by using either the affirmative or negative form in the same tense of the specific verb that was used in the question you were asked. For instance, if someone asks you "Am bi thu an siud a-màireach?" ("Will you be there tomorrow?"), you would either say "Bi" ("will be") to say yes, or "Cha bhi" ("won't be") to say no.

(Irish and Manx Gaelic are both part of the same family of languages, and so used to be the same, though in modern times and with increasing numbers of their speakers being native English speakers first, the languages are mutating, and they now tend to use modified forms of the simple "is" and "isn't" to mean "yes" and "no".)
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Old 07-02-2010, 11:08 AM   #105
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btw. irish is one of the languages, where i dare not to make any guesses on the spelling based on the transcription
Perhaps it looks much harder to you than it really is, Freeshadow. But Gaelic (of which Irish is one version) is fairly straightforward once you understand the sounds the letters represent; for English speakers that can be a stumble at the first, because they expect the letters to behave and sound the way they do in English, and they simply don't. (Think "Loch Ness" -- you don't pronounce the "ch" the way you do in an English "church".) But the spelling is quite straightforward, and much much closer to being phonetic than English is, at least!

(In case you didn't realise, I speak and teach and sing in Gaelic -- in my case, the Scottish version.)
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