Chatting with Children

Here's a conversation that I had today with a little boy who lives in our building (translated from Danish, as he has not yet started to learn English):

Little boy: What have you been doing today?
Me: I had Danish class this morning.
Little boy: I think you speak Danish well.
Me:  Thank you! But there are still a lot of words that I can't understand.
Little boy:  Yeah, me too.

All together now... Awwwwwww!

It has actually been really helpful and confidence-building to speak with the children in the neighborhood lately.  The language is new-ish enough to them that they don't find it strange or frustrating if there are words I don't understand.  In fact, I found myself nervously not unsure about a question that some kids in the dog park asked me a few weeks ago, but they happily obliged me by miming the action of picking up the dog.  They were just asking if they could hold the puppy.

I'm getting to the point where I understand quite a lot of what people are saying around me.  In fact, I tend to understand more than I think I understand.  The trouble comes when someone asks a familiar question in a slightly unfamiliar way, and I completely lose the context and assume they're asking something I won't understand.  For example, I was just in the dog park (again) and a little boy asked me how old my dog was.  Trouble was, he didn't ask it in the way most people ask, which is "How old is he?" or "Hvor gammel er han?" in Danish.  Instead, he asked "How many years is he?" or "Hvor mange år er han?"  I knew the words, but wasn't used to being asked that way, so it took me a moment to wrap my head around the question.

It's all just going to take lots of practice.

And I'm going to need to start stepping up my Danish practice and consumption outside of class if I plan to continue on to module 6.

After class today, I asked my teacher if there was anything special I should do in order to continue on to the 6th module, as most people only go through module 5.  The big Danish fluency exam takes place after module 5, and only those who want to take university courses in Danish continue on to the 6th.  She clarified that I will need to get a very high score on my module 5 exam in order to be allowed to take module 6, so she recommended watching lots of Danish television, reading lots of Danish books and newspapers, and listening to Danish radio.  Apparently, once you take and pass your big module 5 exam (known as Prøve i Dansk 3), you cannot be readmitted into module 5 classes without paying for them yourself.  So, if I pass the Prøve i Dansk 3, but don't have a high enough score to continue to module 6, I'll have to pay to re-take classes and to re-take the exam.

So... you know...

No pressure.