Studieskolen - Module 1.1, Day 1 Recap

This morning, I started my first day at Studieskolen studying Danish for absolute beginners.  It seems that, like me, a few of the folks in the class may have tried to teach themselves with Rosetta Stone, or some other method.  For the most part, though, we're all right at the same level.

While the Danish class I took briefly while in Boston made my head spin, this class seems to be much more my speed.  About 10 minutes into the class, the teacher started speaking almost primarily Danish, but at a level that was easy enough to decipher based on the context.

Module 1.1 at Studieskolen focuses mostly on pronunciation, and only a little bit on the reading and writing of Danish.  Much of this first class was spent going through sentences and crossing out the many, many letters that are silent.

So far, I feel really good about the whole thing.  I feel like I've already learned a lot, but I don't feel so overwhelmed that I'm scared to go back tomorrow morning.  And the 3 1/2 hour class goes surprisingly quickly.

There's a really varied mix of people in the class as well.  It seems that only 3 of us are native English speakers (one other American, and one Brit), while the rest are from all over Europe, Asia and South America.

We'll see how many come back tomorrow.  There are 17 of us now, but I've been told it's fairly common for classes to shrink drastically after the first few days.

Informal Formal Danish Class vs. Sanity

Something had to give.

Either the Danish classes, my job, or the wedding.  Something had to give.

For the sake of my sanity.

And since the latter two are not actually on the table, I regret to say that it looks like I'll have to stop going to Danish classes for now.

Plan B... or... is it C?  I've asked for Rosetta Stone for Christmas.

Hopefully that'll allow me to get through the holidays without completely losing my mind, and then I can start again in earnest in January.

Now, here's the deal with the Rosetta Stone for learning Danish...  Since there isn't really much of a market for folks who aren't Danish to learn the language, the folks at Rosetta Stone never updated beyond version 2 (more widely learned languages go up to version 4).  So, the technology isn't as good, but it's still pretty good.  They've also only made the most basic level of Danish in version 2 for Danish.  Luckily, that's the level I'm at, so it's not an issue.

And if I can become decent at beginning level Danish by the time I get there, I'll feel more confident in the state-provided Danish classes I'll be taking there.

I'm trying not to think of myself as a quitter right now.

It's not easy.

Informal Formal Danish Class #5 - I Didn't Cry!

...Much...

We arrived at the class a few minutes early, and I took the time to be as honest as possible with the instructor.  "I'll be honest," I said. "I haven't even looked at this stuff in two weeks."

Sometimes life just gets in the way.

And this made for an extraordinarily taxing first half of the class.  We started by trying to invert sentences.  Where we can say either "I went to the store yesterday" or "Yesterday, I went to the store," in Danish the sentence structure looks more like "Yesterday went I to the store."

That's all well and good.  I have a decent understanding of that grammatical rule.  What I don't have is the vocabulary committed to memory yet.  So, while I should be able to build a sentence well enough, I don't have the words with which to do so.

It made for a very frustrating first hour or so.

After that, though, we worked on an exercise where we tried to determine which vowel sounds we were hearing when the instructor pronounced various words.

And we were all equally awful at that, so I felt much better.

Informal Formal Danish Class #4 - Fake It 'Til You Make It

Pretend this first paragraph is an expletive-filled rant about the frustrations of having our cable go out for 5 days, thus preventing timely blog posts.

There, now that we have that our of our systems...

I will start by saying that I was a bit distracted from my usual cramming study session for my weekly Danish class last night, as I was awaiting the triumphant return of my fiance from the wilds of Nebraska.

I will claim that as my excuse for being completely lost in this weeks class.  We worked learning words and phrases needed to discuss the weather and family...

But I'll be honest...

I had no idea what I was talking about.  I was guessing left and right, or just plain telling the teacher that I didn't know.  I'm seriously heartened to know that this class is moving at breakneck speed and that Danish classes given in Denmark itself go MUCH more slowly.

Because last night?  I was seriously faking it.

And not at all making it.

Informal Formal Danish Class #3 - Less Oy?

While my fiance is off being the swankiest Brit in Omaha (a.k.a. the only Brit in Omaha), I spent the evening in another Danish class.

I left tonight's class feeling much less overwhelmed than I was last week.  While the material was still hard, and I'm still well behind the other girl (seriously, she can read a sentence in Danish without even thinking about it, where as I have to pause before and after almost every word over 3 letters long... and some under...), I do feel like I'm progressing.  If only nominally.

Today's lesson started with verbs.  And, strangely, verbs are actually easier in Danish than they are in Spanish.  While they have their tenses, they aren't conjugated based on the subject.  As soon as he explained that, I thought "Yes!  I got this!"

My brain may have gotten over excited.

After going over verbs, we did a little work on sentence structure (which is going to take a while for my brain to soak in), and how to ask and answer questions.

Oh, and I learned to tell time.  So, that's good.

Informal Formal Danish Class #2 - Oy...

That's right, I said "Oy."

Keep in mind, this is a small class to begin with, and the handful of us last week were at varying levels.  My fiance speaks Danish very well, but has been out of Denmark for a year and wants to brush up.  One girl is a beginner, but her husband is Danish and she also speaks 3 or 4 other languages, so she has a leg up.  And then there was a Spanish girl who was as much of a beginner as I am, if not more so.

Well, this week, my fiance had a work event, and the Spanish girl dropped out.

So, it was me and the girl for whom languages clearly come pretty naturally.  Not to mention that I definitely hadn't studied nearly as much as I should have.

From what I understand, the class is moving infinitely faster than a traditional, formal Danish class would, so I take a bit of comfort in that.  But...

Yeesh.

I felt so lost today.  While the other girl read through sentences like they were in English, I struggled with the pronunciation of half of the words I saw and couldn't remember the meanings of most of them.

I definitely feel like I'm learning important stuff here, but...

Oy.

Fascinating Posts About Danish... Later.

Not now.  But later.

A few weeks ago I found myself doing a Google search for the words Danish, lessons, and Boston.  The search came back with quite a few relevant leads, so I emailed a few links to my fiance to get his thoughts.

Turns out, he's been a busy bee since then contacting these various institutions about their services, and has found us a conveniently located, reasonably priced option for Danish classes.  Classes with other students.  And a real live teacher.

So, starting on Monday (two days from this post, for those keeping track), I'll be starting up classes.  I tend to do better in a classroom setting than I do when trying to teach myself something.

My self discipline is not one of my best things.