So, I married a sweet scandinavian, and because I’m the type of person who likes being part of the conversation, I started learning danish before we married. I didn’t put huge effort into it, but after a couple years I can participate in conversation, read books aimed at 10 year olds, and hopefully am on my way to some degree of fluency.
What has surprised me the most is that just about every dane I have met has offered the opinion that danish is a difficult language to learn in general, and a difficult european language for english speakers to learn. Young people and older people have said this, those I’ve met in Denmark and in Canada. I’m sure it’s not a universal opinion, but it seems to be common.
I happen to be researching a paper on language learning, and multiple sources put danish in the easiest (least hours to a certain degree of fluency, on average) group of languages. I personally have found danish about as difficult as spanish to lean (I speak french and english natively), a little easier even, as although it has gender, the verbs have fewer cases/forms to remember.
I was particularly surprised that shopkeepers and the like seemed to have a binary view, either my danish was good enough and there was no reason for them to slow down or pick simpler words, or there was no point in trying to communicate with me.
So, where could this idea come from? The only things I can think of is that few non-danes learn danish, and there aren’t that many immigrants (I’m Canadian, so think relatively speaking) speaking with different degrees of imperfect danish.
Are there other languages that have this sort of reputation among speakers?
I’ve heard from native english speakers who attempt to learn Japanese that is one of the cruelist, most masochistic things one can do in life is attempt to learn Japanese language and cultural protocols (the two are inseperably entwined) as an outsider.
I lived with a part-danish family for a little while and I found that I could understand parts of what was going on, partly by picking up common words and phrases, partly through words which were similar to English words and also German (of which I have a very basic grasp). However, I did find the accent and pronounciation nigh on impossible to get right, and I suspect this is why most people say it’s a difficult language to learn.
As you mentioned, very few non-danes learn it - it’s difficult, and English is so wide-spread that there is little need if you don’t want to bother. I heard tales of people who’d lived there for more than 10 years without speaking any Danish at all. I think that in such communities the native speakers get resigned to simply speaking English as a matter of course. I found the same situation when I lived in a very touristy area of France - I would be speaking my (rusty, but capable of conversation) French only to find myself consistently answered in English, with an attitude that suggested that, since I was foreign, I clearly couldn’t speak French and shouldn’t waste the person’s time by trying.
The language is simple enough, I imagine I would have picked it up as fast as Swedish, they are very similar. However, the pronunciation is diabolical! Swedish is bad enough with its sj/skj words (sjuksköterska, skjorta, etc), but Danish has a whole new level of unpronouncable
I think there is also a certain element of national pride in believing that your language is especially hard to speak. The Swedes are also often of the opinion that Swedish is hard to learn, feels a bit rude to say “naw, piece of cake”.
Then again, as rekkah mentions, English speakers get extra cred for their language skills (I have noticed this throughout Scandinavia). It is a horrible double standard. Since English speakers can “get away with” not learning English it is percieved as almost charming when they don’t “Bob is so bold, he’s lived here ten years and he can only say a few phrases!” as opposed to other immigrants even if they have been there a much shorter time “Bloody foreigners, if they want to live here they can learn the language”.
I think I remember this right. Garrison Keillor married a Danish woman, and he moved to Denmark. Even though he learned Danish fairly well, he found he wasn’t funny in Danish. Try as he would, Danes didn’t laugh at his jokes. That was bad news for a professional humorist.
The Basques (I am told) take a certain perverse pride in how difficult their language is for outsiders to learn. There is a popular expression to the effect that the Basques are such morally upstanding people because the devil has never been able to figure out the language in order to corrupt them.
As far as difficultly of acquisition, though, I really feel sorry for those people who start learning English as adults. Ye gods.
Well, maybe people just confuse a horrible cost/benefit-equation with difficulty. Danish isn’t particularly hard to learn, perhaps, but for all your effort you only end up being able to speak with about 5 million people more than you could before (and, granted, some Swedes and Norwegians if you get really good at it).
While grammar is very basic, the hard part of Danish is that everything is a special case. The lack of grammatical rules means that you just can’t guess or construct the term you want to use - you have to know it beforehand, along with the (simple but often irregular) conjugations and grammatical gender. And many of the terms in common use are really metaphors turned clichés so you have to know their specific meaning even if you understand the words used. This makes for sentences that don’t make much sense if translated literally and much of the meaning is lost if you don’t know the cultural connotation to common phrases.
Add this to the fact that written Danish is very different from the spoken language and that you can’t deduce pronounciation from spelling (which in itself is terribly inconsistent).
Conclusion: Yes, the basics are easy. You can learn enough for rudimentary conversation quite quickly. But to really understand Danish you’d have to live here for a long time and make an effort - which isn’t easy when a lot of people are able to speak English and are eager to do so.
