Improving my Danish thread

Contratrombone64

Admiral of Fugues
So, intet (and any other Danes that care to help).

If I post a question about some linguistic issue I have (Danish that is), then you can set me on the right path, yes?

For example.

Kan du lige gå hen til bageren

I'm having trouble finding a meaning for "hen" ...
 

intet_at_tabe

Rear Admiral Appassionata (Ret.)
So, intet (and any other Danes that care to help).

If I post a question about some linguistic issue I have (Danish that is), then you can set me on the right path, yes?

For example.

Kan du lige gå hen til bageren

I'm having trouble finding a meaning for "hen" ...

CT - Very good opening question.

Kan du lige gå hen til bageren - perfect syntax, perfect spelling.

"hen" is a word in danish, what we call an adverbium, which can never stand alone. It points the direction "hen til" or "hen mod" - points at the direction means "towards" or "to" for this particular sentence. But you don´t really need the word "hen" in this sentence. You might as well just say: Kan du lige gå til bageren/Please (asking politely) go to the bakery. It would be better Danish.

Another example in Danish: Vil du venligst gå hen mod vores datter, drej rundt mod mig og gå tilbage til mig. Please walk towards (hen mod) our daughter, turn around towards me (hen mod mig) and walk back to me / or return to me.

So "hen" can never stand alone.
 
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Contratrombone64

Admiral of Fugues
Intet, you can also help me, please, with some colours (I work in marketing and am also a graphic designer so love colours). Here are some names for colours

Traffic-light red
Golden yellow
Persimmon orange
Light green
Dandelion yellow
Turquoise green
Greyish-blue
Peony
Shell pink
Opal green
Ice green
Sky blue
Mustard

Perhaps some of these don't have Danish equivalents?
 

Contratrombone64

Admiral of Fugues
intet - you say adverbium (adverb) but is that the same as biord?
Also - what's the Danish for these grammatical terms:
apostrophe
colon
ellipse
 

intet_at_tabe

Rear Admiral Appassionata (Ret.)
intet - you say adverbium (adverb) but is that the same as biord?
Also - what's the Danish for these grammatical terms:
apostrophe
colon
ellipse

CT64

Sorry for the delay.

To your question about "apostrophe" almost the same in Danish "apostrof" equals "´".
Colon equals ":" equals "kolon".
"Ellipse", not quite sure, seems a mathematical question?. Ask sir Corno Dolce, he possibly knows. Though he is Swedish, he has been to Denmark half of his life, while living in Sweden, scouting for these typical longlegged Danish women, which catch your eye instantly - Yummi!! ;)

Of couse your right, an "adverbium" equals an "adverb".
 

intet_at_tabe

Rear Admiral Appassionata (Ret.)
Intet, you can also help me, please, with some colours (I work in marketing and am also a graphic designer so love colours). Here are some names for colours

Traffic-light red
Golden yellow
Persimmon orange
Light green
Dandelion yellow
Turquoise green
Greyish-blue
Peony
Shell pink
Opal green
Ice green
Sky blue
Mustard

Perhaps some of these don't have Danish equivalents?

CT64

Should have mentioned it before we entered the class room. I am color blind.

"Ice geen" for instance - I can´t even imagine in my head how "ice" can seem to be "green". So I guess some of the enlisted words, can´t be translated directly into Danish. But then, we don´t have a Danish translation for the short american expression "BS" as well.

Btw. what would you call the color of "mustard", presumingly not very tasty?

Humply and respectfully,
 

Corno Dolce

Admiral Honkenwheezenpooferspieler
Good ole Intet! - Emerging again on MIMF after vanishing - pulls a fast one on me about all my vacationing in Denmark - :D:D:D:lol::lol::lol::clap::clap::clap:
 

intet_at_tabe

Rear Admiral Appassionata (Ret.)
Good ole Intet! - Emerging again on MIMF after vanishing - pulls a fast one on me about all my vacationing in Denmark - :D:D:D:lol::lol::lol::clap::clap::clap:

Dear friend and magician at Oceania, sir Corno Dolce :tiphat:

:clap::clap::clap::clap::trp::trp::trp::trp::banana::banana::banana::banana::lol::lol::lol::lol:.

When this has been said, perhaps you could "pull a fast one" to help out our common friend CT64 about colours, and not the long legged Danish women at Helsinore for instance in your past time, please!! I missed you too much laddy ;) to vanish.
 

intet_at_tabe

Rear Admiral Appassionata (Ret.)
CT64

In my youth around the age of 15-16 I was a dedicated amateur on photography. I had won a Nikon F2 camera from an idiot, who made me a stupid bet, the Nikon F2 very fashionable at the time, and very expensive in a store, and somewhere I figured I could enter the education to be a professional photographer.

However, it said on the application form: If you´re color blind don´t applicate.

So I went to an ophthalmologist to be tested, since I always had troubles of deciding between green and brown - blue and purple - yellow and orange and even some nuances of orange towards red.

He showed me some sketches with a lot of different colors inside a circle, and asked me, what number I saw inside this circle? Most humiliating after the fourth test of one of these circles.

He said: Intet, you´re as color blind as the bull, not a chance for you to become an educated photographer. That was the end of my possibility to become a professional photographer, freelancing for Animal Planet for instance.
 

intet_at_tabe

Rear Admiral Appassionata (Ret.)
Thanks intet

Hvor bliver Intet dog af?

I know this means, where has Intet got to, but what exactly is dog?

CT64

"dog" - You surely know how to pick difficult questions on the danish language CT. "dog" is an adverb as well. You may translate it into English using words like: however, really or yet.

An example from Danish: Han synes at virke klog (smart, clever, wise), men er dog ikke klog.

In English: He seems to be clever, however or yet, he is not clever.

But again, as I´ve stated already, some of these adverbs are nor really needed in modern Danish.

Keep it up CT, I am all yours, grateful to be able to help you out.
 
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methodistgirl

New member
It looks like I will have to learn Danish in order to answer this one and
spanish so that I can communicate with those emails I get from the
natives in Mexico.
judy tooley
 

intet_at_tabe

Rear Admiral Appassionata (Ret.)
It looks like I will have to learn Danish in order to answer this one and
spanish so that I can communicate with those emails I get from the
natives in Mexico.
judy tooley

Ms. Judy ;)

There´s always room for one more at the polite class - on the Danish language ;):D:):grin::smirk: However remember to bring boiled hot potatoes for the pronounciation.
 

Contratrombone64

Admiral of Fugues
Intet

It was a holiday weekend here and I don't have the internet on at home (for sanity's sake). I've got a wonderful book published by Gyldendal on Danish Grammar and Syntax at home. Once I've waded my way through my Danish course I'll sit down and master it (!). George and Alison have now travelled to Aarhus to talk to clients about selling English chocolates to Danish customers (such is the excitment of Bente Elsworth's course). Having said that, it is a wonderful beginner's course because it actually deals with plausible situations. Unlike when I learned French in high school (long ago) and we learned how to say uselesss things like: "there is a red cardigan on the chair".
 

intet_at_tabe

Rear Admiral Appassionata (Ret.)
Intet

It was a holiday weekend here and I don't have the internet on at home (for sanity's sake). I've got a wonderful book published by Gyldendal on Danish Grammar and Syntax at home. Once I've waded my way through my Danish course I'll sit down and master it (!). George and Alison have now travelled to Aarhus to talk to clients about selling English chocolates to Danish customers (such is the excitment of Bente Elsworth's course). Having said that, it is a wonderful beginner's course because it actually deals with plausible situations. Unlike when I learned French in high school (long ago) and we learned how to say uselesss things like: "there is a red cardigan on the chair".

Hi CT64 :tiphat:

I really enjoyed your statement about not having access to the internet at home (for sanity´s sake) :clap::tiphat::banana::trp::lol::lol::lol::lol:.

I can tell you, on my own behalf, I bought the latest Gyldendahl language dictionary English/Danish and Danish/English during this week to keep up with you guys, the both of them like two heavy bricks for building a house. A lot of evolvement has happened since the school days and particular the past 9 years, so I figured to keep up my own modern English and Danish, I´d better have these like the prodical son returning to the MIMF, mostly for educational reasons and the fun always implemented here, not to mention the only kind of addiction I have known to be possitive.

Towards you and your questions, remember I am not a teacher, not even close, but I am grateful to you :tiphat::clap: if I can help you in any way, which also help me. Of course the "boiled potatoes"-thing is merely for fun. But actually most foreignors say the Danes sound like talking with a potato in their mouths, you know the letters: æ - ø - å. Btw. your suggestion on "flæskesteg med rødkål" to be the overall national meal? Some people might not agree, but flæskesteg with rødkål and lots of boiled potatoes with fat brown sauce, is the meal most of us eat around Christmas, though many people also replace duck instead of the flæskesteg (from a pig).

About a year ago the Danish national language board within the ministry of education released the results of a test done nationally in public schools, to analyse and discover how well danish teenagers spell and how able they are to use the right syntax. The results were scarying.

One of the reasons for these overall worrying results suggested by researchers, was that the cell phone and the computer as a tool of written communications, mostly using short sentences and various English words, which have influenced the danish language increasingly since the 1960´s, like "remote controle" equals "fjernstyring". Danish shool children use the English "remote controle" rather than the Danish "fjernstyring" into their ordinary Danish language and so on an so forth. English has become the most spoken language in the western world.

This also has an inpact on the ability to maintain spoken dialects, you know the typical language spoken in various parts of the same country by the native Danes - which seems to decrease, because most of us have gotten used to using English as well as Danish, so dialects disappear rapidly.

Anyways, I am here for you sir, so don´t worry if you´re gone for the weekend or anything else. You ask anything, and I´ll try my best to help you out - period!!
 
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Contratrombone64

Admiral of Fugues
intet - med mange tak til dig.

One thing I have learned about brushing up my Danish is that I'd forgotten all those tedious parts of speech that Ms Elseworth (a Dane) uses in her course such as:

Gerund, past participle, predicate ...

So ... I also reinstate my long since dis-used English from my high school days.
 

intet_at_tabe

Rear Admiral Appassionata (Ret.)
intet - med mange tak til dig.

One thing I have learned about brushing up my Danish is that I'd forgotten all those tedious parts of speech that Ms Elseworth (a Dane) uses in her course such as:

Gerund, past participle, predicate ...

So ... I also reinstate my long since dis-used English from my high school days.
´

Right on CT64 :tiphat::clap:

You spoke some time ago about Danish manners at the table. We have a book from the beginning of the past century, which has become a classic in Danish manners at all, and especially for young women about how to behave and how to please their husbands - 2. in rank to the husband. It was written by a Mrs. Gad known throughout Denmark.

Though what she wrote about a hundred years ago may seem funny, old fashioned or out of date, it´s one of the most popular best selling books on Danish manners at all.
 
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