“You are a (Danish) hooker”: Grappling with Danish

This week I’ve been in Copenhagen. A very different picture to when I was here 7 months ago.

The sun has been beating down, and rather than hurrying between places to avoid rain and sleet it’s been blue skies, late-night beach swimming, and alfresco cafes.

I’ve also been attempting to learn Danish, though the sounds which Danes make when speaking are somewhat hard to grasp.

Here’s one such phrase I was practicing ahead of giving my girlfriend’s Mum a bottle of wine: 

• OK, here goes: ‘du er eine lius-noolher’
• No, no, no ‘lius-noolher’
• ‘Lius-noolher’
• No! ‘Lius-noolher’
• ‘Lius-noolher?’
• ‘Lius-noolher!’
• *ffs*

The word in question was, on reflection, high stakes.

Whilst the sentiment is good (‘du er eine lius-noolher’ means ‘you are a “life-enjoyer”‘) it is apparently very easy to confuse with the Danish word for ‘hooker’.

My pronunciation was (thankfully) so bad that she had no idea what I was on about and so no offense was caused.

It reminds me of the importance of getting the sounds right first in a new language, before trying to learn anything else. A good site that explains more is: The Mimic Method

In other news…

One conversation (in English) that we got onto was British humour. A few tangents later and we were talking about the Monty Python sketch: The Four Yorkshiremen.

If you haven’t watched it in a while, I hope it brings you 3:13 of joy.