Do you speak english?

           The two phrases I probably say the most here are: Do you speak English? and Sorry, I don't speak Danish (I am not sure why I have to apologize for not speaking Danish but with out the "sorry" it feels rude). Everyone in Denmark knows at least two languages, and a lot of the time they know more. That has been really nice; anytime we are lost or need help at a store we can approach just about anybody and they will be able to speak English. Not just broken English but really good English, almost so good that you would not guess that it wasn’t their first language.

            That being said, we are still in a foreign country whose national language is unfamiliar to us. Danish is really hard to understand, it is not very pretty and they use a lot of sounds that we can’t duplicated (mostly they sound like grunts). When we do try to say something like the name of a city we want to visit, it usually either results in a lot of laughter for how we said the word wrong or a vague expression followed by us having to spell the word we are trying to say and them saying the word exactly the way we said it. The written words are sometimes really long, but half the letters are silent so you would never guess the spoken word goes with the written one. They use the Roman alphabet so all the letters (except three weird ones) look the same as English letters. Unfortunately this is some times more confusing the helpful. For example see below.

 

The following placard appeared in the window of a business establishment “and was considered quite ordinary by all passers-by, Follow the link to see why. 

              Even though we have been here almost a month now we don’t really understand anything said in Danish and only can use a few words. One of the surprising things is how much we can understand without really understanding. I often will try to go as long as I can at a store or on the train without letting on that I don’t know what anyone is saying. We have found that usually just by paying attention and smiling and nodding you can fake comprehension pretty well (actually people are probably just really annoyed with our lack of response but we don’t understand that part either). The three words we know are: hi (hej, pronounced hi), Goodbye (hej hej, you just say hi twice) and thank you (tak, pronounced tac). With those three words we get along pretty well. This week I am hoping to add excuse me to my vocabulary, but it’s a bit more difficult.

           We are really hoping to at least get to a point that we understand Danish pretty quick. At church each week someone has to sit by us and translate everything. I know that this is difficult for them and we feel like a burden (although we pay much better attention). A lot of the time the translator seems to summarize what is being said - we are not sure we always get the whole message.

My cousin, who is currently living in Japan with his family for three years, shared this clip on facebook a while back. It is more appropriate for them (Danish is not quite as intense has Japanese) but I think it demonstrates how we feel a lot of the time.