language

Danish is a really, really difficult language to learn. The pronunciation isn’t intuitive, and almost everyone in Denmark over the age of seven knows how to speak English (luckily for me!) so as soon as it’s obvious that your Danish is ‘not so good’ - an understatement! - they will automatically use English. My ‘functional’ (and I use that term very loosely) Danish consists of “Hej” (Hello), “Hej hej” (goodbye), “undskyld” (excuse me/sorry - I use this a LOT) and “tak!” (Thanks!).

Hugo goes to a Danish preschool, so all the teachers speak English as well as Danish but all the children speak Danish (so of course most of the day is done in Danish). He has been picking up words here and there. Last week he asked for a “vegemite smørbrød” and as I went to the kitchen he called out “that’s a sandwich, Mum!” … although I should have realise he meant the Danish open sandwich because he was quite offended when I brought him a “proper” sandwich, and not just vegemite on bread. When I arrived to pick him up from preschool one afternoon, all the children were playing in the playground and Hugo was babbling a very Danish-sounding babble (the same way babies, when they start to make speech sounds, babble in English).

Sophie’s English is exploding - we’re in that awkward stage where she is saying so many new words and phrases that I can’t keep up, and although she knows what she’s saying I can’t always understand what she means so it can be frustrating for both of us. But it’s really exciting as well as she starts to use longer phrases and her ever increasing vocabulary. (And she does have a few Danish words as well).