Danish vs English

Influx of English language into Danish sometimes seems ridiculous. Here is a sample of some "danish" words that are considered as a part of the standard Danish language:

housewarming

weekend

Walk-in-closet

Issue

Clutch

I will not even go into the IT words at all. For a much longer and more detailed list, look here: http://cphpost.dk/news/many-new-danish-words-come-from-english.html

I figured this out on one class at language school. After the class I asked my teacher are these words in danish language and he confirmed it. My next question was, but how do the linguist take it? Are they trying to find substitute or try to fight it in some way. He said that they just conclude that is how it is, that is the modern trend and that is that. I must say that when I heard it I was shocked and then I was shocked by my shock.

The reason is that in Croatia language patriots are trying to resist modern day influx from English language with everything they got and sometimes they go so far that it is just ludicrous. I must say that Danes look like the opposite extreme. They are just looking at it happening without even trying to do anything, but they just shrug their shoulders and say that's how it is.

It seems to me that in the long run danish could completely lose the battle with English and here is why. To start with, today in Denmark 80% of the population speaks English. Most of the people who don't speak English are old people who are about to retire. When older generations slowly fade out of the working market, country will be bilingual for all practical purposes. Secondly, modern day danish children are bilingual, they speak English as good as danish and they start learning English at the start of their education. Third, "official" language in the most of the business sector is English, "official" language in the IT sector is English. When you are looking for a job in Copenhagen, a lot of job postings is in English and a lot of the positions do not even require knowledge of Danish language.

To continue, the topic that I covered in the last post, danish is a hard language to learn both for foreigners and for danish children. And there is a couple of reasons for that. One is a large number of vowels and then an even higher number of vowel sounds in speech, it adds up to 40 vowel sounds in total in spoken language. That makes the pronunciation very mushy and then to complicate things more Danes do not pronounce a large number of letters, mostly consonants and in the process they fuse words, so in speech it sound like they said one word, but they actually said 3 or more. All of these things taken together makes the danish language difficult to master. And it is not only difficult to foreigners but it is difficult to danish children also. Danish children start talking much later then the average child. Average child starts talking between 18 months and 2 years. Average danish child starts talking around 3 years of age because of the trickiness of danish language. To top it up Danish researcher, Dorthe Bleses compared vocabulary acquisition in young children and she realised that at the age of 15 months Danish children have the smallest vocabulary of only around 80 words, Swedish children at the same age know 130 words and Croatian children around 200 words. Danish children do catch up later. The reason for their slow start is because of a lot of vowel sounds in Danish and a lot of letters being swallowed in speech, Danish children need more time to crack the language code but when they do, they will catch up.

If, on one hand, we assume that the modern trends in Denmark will continue indefinitely into the future by which I mean: continuous influx of foreigners (which is necessary for Denmark in order to replace the population because Denmark has too low birth rates with 1.79 birth per woman), growing strength of English language in the business sector, growing influx of English words into danish vocabulary, bilingual trends among danish youth.

On the other hand, if we take into consideration that English language is a bit simpler to learn and a lot more forgiving in pronunciation and that English will be the language that is common to most of the population, both foreigners and locals. Than if we take language as a tool that facilitates communication and if we have two languages in a population that are equally spread out, without outside interventions, language that is simpler will slowly but surely take over. Also, danish language has one unexpected drawback. Legally, Denmark does not have an official language. Danish language isn't defined by law as the official language in Denmark. The only place you are legally obliged to speak danish is in courts and nowhere else. Maybe this is something Danes should consider, protect their language at least as a part of their national heritage because if they don't, in the long run, it will have troubles competing with English.

Jamal learns Danish

For one homework from the language school I read a short text about Jamal. In short, Jamal came to Denmark and he is working hard to integrate himself into danish society which entails learning the language. Unfortunately, learning danish isn't easy for Jamal. He needs to practice his speech but every time he tried talking to a Dane he would have at least one of three problems. Either a Dane wouldn't understand what Jamal is saying, or Jamal wouldn't understand what a Dane is saying or when a Dane would hear Jamal trying his best to speak Danish he would switch to English and would keep talking in English to Jamal because it is just easier that way.

That little story portrays accurately what problems the foreigners who are trying to learn danish face with every day but it also portray elements of the danish language that make it so difficult to learn.

Danes do not understand Jamal

Problem with speaking danish when you are learning is that you need to speak more to natives, but when you try they do not understand you and you can't figure out why because you are doing everything the teacher told you in the language school and that of course causes frustrations. The problem lies in the fact that Danish language has a lot of vowels that sound very similar to one another and an untrained ear can't tell the difference but the difference is huge. For example:

"Jeg vil gerne have en kylling kebab."

"Jeg vil gerne have en killing kebab."

Words "kylling" and "killing" sound very similar but the difference in meaning is huge. In the first sentence you expressed a wish for a chicken kebab and in the second one for a kittens kebab.

This exemplifies one big problem when learning danish. It is very unforgiving to pronunciation mistakes which makes it very difficult to practice because you have very few people to talk to who will understand you.

Jamal does not understand Danes

When you try to speak to Danes they are not helping with their pronunciation as well. When Danes speak normally they are speaking so fast and they swallow so many letters that often it can sound like they said one word but in fact they said three words and it is very difficult to separate them. Additionally the problem is that, that way of speaking is officially called assimilation and it is a part of Danish standard language. So until you are not capable of fusing the words together in speech you are not talking proper danish.

For example:

"What did you say?" is in danish "Hvad siger du?" and it when a native pronounces it, it sounds like this "Vesiru?". So they fuse three words with 11 letter in total to something that sounds like one word of 6 letters. And this is the starkest contrast between Danish and Croatian. If you would pronounce in Croatian the same sentence "Što si rekao?" as "Šsireko?" you would be considered as an illiterate fuck who should learn how to speak. To think that the total opposite is true in Denmark.

Danes do not want to speak Danish to Jamal

When you find yourself in a real life situation and you use danish, if Danes sniff out your non native danish speech they will momentarily switch to English and insist on English. That is not surprising at all. All danish children are bilingual, 80% of the population in Denmark is bilingual. Danish children start learning english in the first grade of school. Since I move to Denmark I found myself only two times in a situation where the other person couldn't speak English. Maybe with this fact Danes acknowledge that English is simpler and there will be no misunderstandings in communication, so why even bother with Danish. I am just thinking out loud.

Sad Jamal has a hard time learning Danish

So no wonder Jamal is having problems in learning Danish. He should practice his speech but whenever he tries, Danes do not understand what is he saying because of the small mistakes he makes in pronunciation, which is totally expected since he is trying to learn the language. But a lot of pronunciation mistakes Jamal makes changes the meaning of his sentences so much that native speakers have hard time understanding him. Jamal is making a lot of pronunciation mistakes and that is the reason why he should practice his danish. He does not understand Danes because from their brains to Jamal ears comes only about 40% of the letters and most of them are vowels which is very difficult to decipher for Jamal. And when they realize all the problems they need to face while talking to Jamal, they will just use English because they know it is simpler and there will be no lost in translation problems. So it all goes in a bad spiral that makes learning Danish hard for Jamal. But Jamal should find some solace in the fact that he is not alone in this problem. Danish children have the same problem. At the age of 15 months danish children have a very small vocabulary because they are having the same problems as Jamal. It is very difficult to separate/extract "Hvad siger du?" from "Vesiru?". But more about that in the next blog post or should I say "Bureoutthaitnxblgpst!" because that's how it sounds sometimes to Jamal.