GGF Young Professionals

It's all Dansk to me

I thought traveling in Denmark would be a cinch because everybody here speaks English. They do, but a lot of traveling involves reading signs and following directions, which, in this case is written in Danish.

How can a Germanic language be so incomprehensible? At least with French, Spanish and Italian, I could guess the meaning of words but Danish only has a few grammatical and basic vocabulary terms in common with English, or it seems that way.

Here's a few examples of how the two are alike:

• "Fra" and "til" means "from" and "to" when used with dates.
• "Hej" is pronounced "hey" and serves roughly the same function in greeting people.
• "Tak" means "thanks" and sound a little like it, too.
• "Ja" is pronounced "ya" and means "ya," well, "yes."

But that's about it. At least with the Romance languages, you can guess more meaningful vocabulary terms. If you see "zupa de pesce" or hear a waiter say it, it's not that hard to conclude correctly that "zupa" is "soup" and "pesce" means "fish" or "piscine." I can't even read a can of soup at the Danish supermarket. It could be anything in there. Fish balls, chicken nuggets, matzo balls, who knows? I ran across a sign in front of somebody's garage this morning and it looked like it could've been poetry or a declaration of love or "don't block my driveway, assclown."

I blame Bill the Badass, which is what William the Conqueror would've been known had he been alive today. Old English and the Scandinavian languages used to be closer until Bill showed up with his army of, ironically enough, French-speaking Scandinavians and changed the English language by fire and the sword.

In the way that few native English speakers can speak Danish, all Danes speak English and very well. Oddly enough, most Danes I've spoken with have American accents and not British despite the proximity. As I've mentioned elsewhere, some Finns told a friend of mine that Scandinavian TV does not dub American movies and, consequently, that's how a lot of Scandinavians learned their accent.

Their use of the language is pretty clever, too, judging by the store signs I've seen. One is called "Kitsch Bitch," which I assume is a playful way to refer to their customers. Yeah, it looked like kitsch for women. Another is called "Golddigger" and if I were a golddigger, that's what I'd wear. And best of all, the Carlsberg beer advertising on Hans Christen Andersen Boulevard: "Probably the best beer in town." Who but inferiority-complex ridden Scandinavians could come up with that??

posted by Tuey @ 1:31 PM