Danish language learning resources (1) - books and courses

[xcitric]

I made the biggest mistake ever in accidentally buying a Danish course without the CDs from a website in my country that doesn't really have everything they display in stock, so finding the CD that goes with it separately is pretty much impossible. Learned my lesson the hard way!

On a slightly unrelated note, your accent is very pleasant to listen to :-)

[roedgroedudenfloede]

@xcitric Thanks! Yes, you almost certainly need to have access to audio when learning Danish. Similarly to English, many words sound nothing like the way they are written (to English ears, anyway). Additionally, Danish isn't really that "well known" as a language. Ask a British or American person to do a French/German accent, and they are likely to be able to (albeit comically) but ask them to do a Danish accent and they may do the a hurdy-gurdy "Swedish Chef" (which sounds nothing like Danish!)

[xcitric]

@roedgroedudenfloede I have the Routledge Colloquial Danish book, but sometimes I feel like I'm learning to speak like a textbook. I've noticed that Danish people don't use formal expressions that much among themselves, so I always wonder: should I use "Hvordan har du det?" or "Hvad så?"... "Hej" or "Dav"? and so on. I'll need this when I visit Denmark a second time! ;-)

And I agree! My best friend is Swedish, and when she speaks English it sounds nothing like a Dane speaking English.

[larstheu]

@xcitric I am from Denmark. I will answer some of your questions. To friends and colleagues and NOT to people you don't known: "Hvordan har du det?" - used very commonly, after having said "hej" og "god morgen", "god dag" or "god aften". Speaking about the weather is also common item to speak about.. "Dav" is used only in "Jylland". Nice vid BTW. Hot tip: In danish we have 2 types of "d", the hard "d" like in english, and a soft "d", wich in english sounds like "th" in the word "the".

[xcitric]

@larstheu Thanks so much for your reply; very much appreciated!

Just another question: if "Hvordan har du det?" isn't used to people you don't know, is there any "How are you/how's it going?" equivalent which you can say to strangers or do you usually just leave it at "God morgen/dag/aften"?

Thanks in advance!

[larstheu]

@xcitric About contacting strangers: You will more often than not speak about the weather. If the other person begins speak about something that had your interest, then you can reply.

Another is that you can use the fact that you are learning danish, ask a dane how to do the correct pronunciation of some word(s)/sentence or to write some danish text, and i am sure that a stranger is more than willing to help you, if they, of course, are not busy doing something else.

[xcitric]

@larstheu I'm sure any Dane would be glad to hear us foreigners attempting to pronounce rødgrød med fløde :-)

Thanks again for the help!

[AspiringPolyglot22]

Thanks! This helps a lot!

[PaulSLambeth]

Nice summary here! I've seen that the Complete Teach Yourself books haven't actually changed the content - someone I'm subscribed to (forgot his name sorry) made a video including Complete German and Mandarin and said they've only changed the layout. In case you were thinking of getting it in November. That Routledge grammar is huge! The Finnish one is about half that thickness and ... Finnish grammar is notorious. They've not got one for Icelandic (yet...)

[roedgroedudenfloede]

@PaulSLambeth Thanks! I've actually just pre-ordered the Complete Danish course as, as you probably noticed from the video, the copy I currently own has seen better days!