Recently, I went to lunch with some of my classmates.
At first, the waitress was speaking to us entirely in Danish, so I thought to myself, "Self, you should order in Danish."
Glancing over the menu, I realized that I actually knew how to order in Danish. Simple stuff. No problem. All I had to say was "Jeg vil gerne have en burrito med kylling. Tak skal du have!"
No problem.
And yet, when came to take our orders, what did I say?
"I'll have the burrito with chicken, please. Thanks..."
*cue Price is Right sad horns*
It's an issue of confidence at this point. I worry that I'm not pronouncing things quite right, and that whoever I'm speaking to won't understand. So I stick to English, even when I know the Danish.
Not to mention the fact that I worry that, if my Danish is decent enough that they don't switch to English right away, they'll then ask me a question in Danish that I don't understand or can't answer in Danish.
Hopefully, I'll look back at this post in a few months and think, "Remember when I was too scared to speak Danish to the Danes? That was silly."
No comments:
Post a Comment