Categories: friends, words, translation, denmark
Date: 04 March 2008 19:53:22
About a week ago, I thought I might try to compose a little note to the Great Dane in his own language seeing as I had reached the dizzy heights of Chapter 3 of "Teach yourself Danish on the hoof".
I found a nice clean sheet of paper, sharpened my pencil, considered the gems I might impart, chewed the pencil for a while and, with tongue clamped firmly between my teeth, began to compose my literary work.
I had not been engaged in this activity for more than a few seconds when I began to remember why people are so easily disheartened when learning languages. When a schoolgirl, I learned French and Latin, followed by German and Spanish. I enjoyed the experience and did not find the general principles difficult. But of course, for quite a long time, the whole experience was purely an academic exercise. The book or teacher would present a new topic, we would learn the vocabulary, points of grammar and put the two together in forming sentences in the foreign language or translate into English. After a few years of this, I then met native speakers of these languages (well, not of Latin, obviously). I realised that speaking to them was a completely different ball game because they didn't stick to the script and would use words and phrases which we hadn't learned. I managed to muddle along and understand if not the whole conversation then at least the general gist.
In trying to compose a modest note in Danish, I was reminded of all this. I simply did not need the vocabulary for meeting someone at the airport and another person at the railway station. Nor did I need to be able to say that I was hungry and thirsty and yes, a gin and tonic would be just the ticket, tak. I wanted to ask about events that had occurred whilst in Denmark (past tense: had the dog recovered from its bout of vomiting?) and enquire about things in the offing (future tense: will the outcome of his business meeting have a positive impact on his job?). The Danish present tense is probably the easiest present tense I have ever come across (so hurrah for that!) but it simply wasn't going to meet my needs.
I was determined to continue with my endeavour (which was not easy as the vocab list at the back of the book is listed only Danish to English which makes looking up words a bit tricky if you haven't already got an idea of which letter they start with - and how many beginners' courses include the word "vomit" anyway?) and eventually I cobbled together a few paragraphs.
I have no idea if what I wrote was moderately accurate or not. I suspect that it wasn't as I have not had a reply. Either my friend has died of heart failure at seeing his native tongue massacred in such an insensitive way or his time is fully engaged in setting up a language school for pesky foreigners. Do you think I should continue in my endeavours and tackle Chapter 4 - "Shopping" - or shall I just send him a translation of my missive to give him a clue as to what I was trying to say?