Speaking the Language

After being here for over a month, I have realized one or two things, one of the most important being that we as Americans are woefully lacking in our language skills. I have yet to encounter anyone here who can't carry on a pretty sophisticated conversation in English. This makes me feel quite gauche, so I've decided to do something about it. I picked up my phrasebook and all the linguistic goodness the internet had to offer and I began seriously to try and teach myself Danish.

Even the birds here have more linguistic skills than I do. Just look at the disdain in his eye...

It was actually kind of a fun thing to intersperse my school work with. I've started to recognize some written words that crop up in daily life and even to extrapolate the meanings of some of them. Auditory comprehension is still pretty much beyond me at this point, but at least after hearing the language spoken around me for a month it no longer sounds completely foreign. Pronunciation is also a major hurdle. But one of my RA's has been teaching me some important phrases when we're out at the bar. For example: Jeg vil gerne have en øl. (I would like a beer). I would try and spell that out phonetically, but it would be a mess, so I won't. Suffice it to say that it sounds nothing like it looks. 


I also found a magical website that has audio clips of words being pronounced by native speakers. It may be the most useful thing I've ever encountered on the internet. If anyone's trying to learn a language, I highly recommend it: http://www.forvo.com


So hopefully by the time I leave I will no longer be an English speaking embarrassment.