Speaking like the locals

You start to wonder about this quickly.

For those of you who’ve never come into contact with Danish, I shall endeavour to explain what must be one of the world’s most difficult languages to speak. I say ‘speak’, because grammatically it’s not overtly different to other Western languages to learn. In fact, unlike, say French, you don’t need to learn a gazillion verb endings for different voices, it’s simply:

jeg er, du er, vi er, etc…

But, speaking is a different kettle of fish.

I can’t think of one word actually pronounced in its entire form.

Here are some quick examples:

‘meget’, the word for ‘very’. This is pronounced something like – ‘mahwwwl’.

‘og’ – ‘and’ – is ‘oh’ and ‘hurtigt’ – quickly – is ‘hor’dit’ (sort of)

…and on it goes. Seriously!

Consequently, actually stringing a comprehensible sentence together seems only possible by making it utterly incomprehensible.

Still, progress is being made. Now, at least when I’m shopping, I’ll get a reply – albeit in English…

NQDII has come up with a an answer to at least to towns and suburbs, so at least we can use our own ‘dialect’:

Vanløse – Van loser
Roskilde – Rockslide
Nivå – Nivea
Lyngby – Lingbi
Køge – Codge

- So as you can see, we’re almost fluent.