Your First Danish Lesson

As I’m sure you have read, I have now been in school for two weeks, and it is still going well. The teacher is really good which makes it enjoyable. I also am quite good at it if I do say so which makes it also more enjoyable then if I had to struggle to keep up. With work and with Signe I practice a lot more than the others in the class that just go home to their husbands and speak their native language.

However there are some parts of the language that are rough, like the pronunciation of of certain letters such as the R which pretty much needs to be swallowed (which took me til I was 12 before I could pronounce in English, many of you endearingly knew me as Cowy before then). the Ø is quite is just not a sound we make, and the you have the soft D witch is a cross between an L and TH but neither. and them together with a B and you have BRØD = bread. Completely unpronounceable. I feel as if I’m going to throw up every time I try. or RØD = red, or RØDBRØD which thankfully isn’t a term.

But anyways, my real intention of this post was to complain about their number system. Being a number person with aspirations to teach math in this country this is a subject I need to learn, But it makes no sense.

First off they put their numbers in the wrong order. Such as fem-og-tyve, which mean 5 and 20. They still read from left to right, so if you are using a cash register, like I do, and you have to type 43 but tell the soldier 3 and 40, you get some really messed up things going on. However they would say tre-hundrede-seks-og-fyrre (which by they way they don’t space like that, they jam it all together to be trehundredeseksogfyrre). 300, 6 and 40. if you are going to go in the wrong direction atleast they could be consistent.

Second, half the time they use a base 20 number system and the other half they don’t. let’s watch

10 = ti (normal enough)

20 = tyve (pronounced tuva)

30 = tredive (also really hard to pronounce)

40 = fyrre

50 = halvtreds (in other words “half 3″)

60 = Tres (plain enough to see that says 3 to me)

70 = halvfjerds (half 4)

80 = firs (4)

90 = halvfems (half 5)

100 = hundrede (back to normal)

When I point it out to Danes most of them have never thought about it, they just know it, but I have to say 6 and halv 3 to get 56. But why isn’t 10 half 1, or 40 pronounced 2. I constantly get 40 and 80 mixed up since in my head they both mean 4. (That got me introuble once when I was calling out numbers for the danish version of bingo and called 43 when I meant 83 and someone claimed to win. They were not happy when they infact did not with the cake. Life lesson: don’t get in the way of a soldier and his cake.)

Lastly, their higher order numbers are all wrong. they have “en million” which mean “a million” but that’s where it ends. next where we have a billion they have “en milliard”, ok I’m used to their words being different. But after that they go to “en billion” which is actually 1 trillion. and they continue, en billiard, en trillion, en trilliard. By this time we are up to 10^21 which is a billion times a trillion. So if I was talking about America’s national debt and accidentally said trillion when I meant trillion in English I’d be talking about more money than exists in the world. which is quite a big difference.

So there you have it folks, your first danish lesson. I hope it was as frustrating for you as it is for me. I love you all and I hope you have a good week.

In Christ

Cory

P.S. Signe and I just started an english bible study yesterday, and there are 6 of us 2 danes and 4 americans. And surprisingly enough 1 of the other americans is studying abroad from VT. what a small world, Go Hokies!

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