Fart!

So language is pretty interesting. I took French for how many years at school? Do I speak French?

Most people in Denmark speak English and the few we have encountered who don’t seem to be immigrants to Denmark so they too are multilingual. Yesterday we had a meeting at the school the boys will attend, a reminder that our relationship with the Danish language is about to change. Our Danish has really gotten nowhere so far, we know how to pronounce a few words better than we did at first and subtitles on TV are bound to help (eventually) if you read them when watching in English, and of course the language also surrounds us when we are out and about.

What follows is juvenile I know but anyone who knows me won’t be surprised. The words that we learn first are those that are familiar and those that we need. Sometimes the familiarity is a similar sounding word that also means the same, such as ‘hi’ (hi), or ‘ni’ spelt 'nej' (no), ‘fra’ (from). Then there are the words that are the same in appearance but different in meaning, one of the most obvious here is ‘fart’ (speed). We have seen it in many different contexts; my personal favourite was on the side of a bus ‘Turistfart’. In many stores we noticed signs that read ‘slutspurt’, we thought that didn’t sound very nice, it turns out that it has to do with the approaching end of the sale, the ‘final sprint’ or ‘slutspurt’.