Pludselig Kan Jeg Forstå Dig!

So... all of a sudden, I can speak Danish.

I'm not sure when the shift happened from me feeling like I just didn't understand enough Danish to converse to suddenly feeling fairly comfortable with it.  The change seemed to just appear from thin air.

It's a nice change.

Last week, I was hunting for a used digital piano on what is basically the Danish equivalent to Craigslist.  I wasn't feeling terribly optimistic, because I'd never had a response from anyone I'd ever contacted from the site about anything.  This time, however, I felt at least confident enough to write my inquiries in Danish, so I responded to two ads.  And within an hour, I had responses from both.  I arranged to take a look at one of the pianos, and when I was biking there, I decided I would try to get through as much of the conversation as possible in Danish.

We ended up doing the entire deal in Danish, and he actually seemed surprised to find out that I wasn't Danish.  Point for me!

And just now, while out walking the dog, I struck up a conversation with a woman who's daughter I normally see walking their dog.  She asked me where I was from, and when I told her, she said (in Danish, of course), "Oh, yes, I thought I heard a bit of an accent."  She was then surprised to learn that I'd only been here a little over a year.

Granted, I've gotten pretty used to responding to the kinds of questions other dog owners ask, so it wasn't anything too complicated, but I'm feeling a little bit proud of my Danish skills lately.

It's refreshing to suddenly understand most of the conversations going on around me.  There are still countless words that I don't know, but I'm feeling more and more confident that I might be able to do fairly well on my PD3 exam in November.

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.