Elective Course Overview: Danish Language and Culture

Note that this post largely talks about language, mostly because I absolutely love languages! For more on the culture aspect, see some of my other posts and those of my fellow bloggers!

Ah, the Danish sunset. Once the signal that evening classes were over, it now greeted us as we left Nielsine’s class for the last time. The semester and our time together is, as I write this, coming to an end, and just like the passing of the sun across the sky, it is happening quicker and earlier than any of us expected.

Despite this, these were not the thoughts that occupied the minds of me or my classmates. The clicking of keyboards and hearty language practice for our language oral exam was done in a joyous and amused mood, accompanied by Danish sweets, Christmas music, and pronunciation errors that ensured everyone was engaged.

We had gone through quite a bit together. From the basic Hej, jeg hedder… (Hi, my name is…) to saying such sentences as Om aftenen skal vi gå i byen, spise på en restaurant og købe ind! (Tonight, we should/will go out on the town, eat at a restaurant, and go shopping!), we have covered a decent bit of ground in the four months that we went through this class.

Oh, and don’t even get started on how to pronounce some of these things! While still indeed a challenge, especially since that is the major point of focus in our oral exams, we’ve been getting better at it. At first a challenge, the Danish letters æ, å, and ø are now just slightly more familiar, and the rules surrounding how and when to pronounce d, g, and r have generally been drilled adequately into our minds (for me personally, knowing some German really helped, but there are plenty of differences).

Of course, there is always room for improvement in the world of languages, and it is this that our energetic and eager instructor, Nielsine, always made sure to keep in mind as she led us through each day’s practice with a smile and a contagious, judgement-free laughter as we went through the standard struggles of anyone learning Danish.

For our last days together, it was time to revisit our lesson on hygge. On Friday, we visited Guðrun’s Goodies (which I actually visited and briefly touched on in my post on Rådhuspladsen), where we each got treated to a hot drink of our choice (I and someone else opted to pair this with one of their delicious sweets) as we worked on our oral exam scripts. As for today, those Danish sweets I mentioned earlier consisted of croissants, pebernøder (pepper nuts), and brunkager (brown cakes, which are actually cookies).

Indeed, a sweet ending to a sweet class in an overall sweet country…Well, for everyone else. I personally have a month here, but that just doesn’t tie the bow on a blog post that well, now does it? See? Ending. Ruined. At least until next time!