Wait, what?

I've talked a lot about how difficult it can be to pronounce Danish words to a degree that the Danes will understand.

Today, let me talk a little bit about how hard it is to understand the Danes.

First, a clip from a Danish film that we watched in class yesterday, called "Bænken" or "The Bench, " in case you're not sure what Danish sounds like:

Our teacher has taken to showing us Danish films on Fridays that are in some way related to the material we've been learning.  The current chapter we're working on is about Danish drinking culture (the Danes drink a lot), and this film has a lot to do with excessive drinking.  So, not only are they speaking Danish (which is mumbly on its best days), but the characters are also drunk off their asses most of the time.

That being said, we always watch Danish films with Danish subtitles, just so that we can follow what they're saying.  Not such a shock for a foreigner to have an easier time if the subtitles are there, sure.

The thing is, the Danes use the subtitles too.  I was just chatting with a Danish friend earlier today who said that she often turns on subtitles when watching Danish movies.

Now, sure, a lot of countries have a variety of accents which people from other parts of the country have trouble understanding.  England is a great example, as they have countless different accents, and people from the south of England often have trouble understanding accents from the north.  The opposite can be said of the US, in fact.

The thing is... Denmark is a very small country.  There are only 6 million people living here.

It strikes me that 6 million people shouldn't have such a tough time understanding each other.

But the one phrase that you'll hear the Danes say to each other more than almost anything else is, "Hvad siger du?" which translates to, "What did you say?"

A Very Expat Christmas

We didn't have a particularly Danish Christmas this year.

Instead of celebrating on the 24th, as they do here, we kept with American and English tradition and celebrated our low-key Christmas on the 25th.  My husband made an amazing duck for lunch, plus Christmas pudding with home-made custard, and for dinner I made some steak and potatoes.  I got my husband the Game of Thrones books box set, so we both spent much of the day reading.

It should be noted that I am still on book one, which we bought several months ago, while he is now more than 300 pages into book 2, having started reading it yesterday.

In other quasi-literary (well, not really) news, we spent the evening of the 23rd out to dinner and a movie with a classmate and her husband.  We went to go see The Hobbit (or "Hobbitten," as it's called here).

I've come to expect the Danish subtitles when going to an English language film here, but I tend to forget that any parts of the film in any other language (say... Elvish for example) would also only have Danish subtitles.  So, I found myself putting my Danish lessons to good use during this one, and surprised myself with hour much I was able to understand.  There were still plenty of words that I didn't understand, but I understood enough to figure out what was going on.

As far as the movie itself, my husband and I agreed: It was a fairly good movie that couldn't decide which audience to play to.  The book is basically a kids book, and the way the movie started, I thought perhaps the movie was going to play more towards a younger audience too.  But as it went on, it got darker and more graphic, and it seemed to fall into the same feel as the Lord of the Rings movies.  Despite that, though, we definitely enjoyed it.

Next, we'll start watching seasons 2 and 3 of The Killing (or "Forbrydelsen").

With English subtitles, of course.