Last week, in addition to Whit Monday, we also had a public holiday on Friday for Grundlovsdag (Constitution Day … although every time I saw it written, I thought it was Groundhog Day). It was also Father’s Day AND the last public holiday for the year so we decided to use it wisely and caught an overnight ship to Oslo, to expose our children to a wide range of cultural experiences like Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” (there seem to be several version of this picture, which is fortunate, as it keeps getting stolen); the Vigeland Sculpture Park (see photos here) … and the ball pit on the ship.
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I was riding down to pick Hugo up from preschool today and I pulled up at the traffic lights in front of a taxi (an aside - thank goodness the taxi drivers are less … insane … than Sydney taxi drivers, or I may not have survived the experience). I noticed he had a sign in his window saying “FRI” and I wondered what strange community service this was that required taxis to advise people of what day it is. Five minutes down the road, I realised it’s actually the Danish word for “FREE”. Of course. Even when nobody witnesses my moments of d’oh! they are still embarrassing. (Not so much so that I won’t blog it though. Obviously).
This morning I got a drink for Hugo and he took it without saying “Thank you” so I prompted him “Tak, Mor”. Rather than repeating me, he said “no Mummy, you say it MOR” (it sounded exactly the same to me) and so I tried to say it right several times until he told me “Don’t worry Mummy, you just speak English”. *sigh*
I was buying some flowers (very cheap here!) this afternoon, and the florist asked me something in Danish - unfortunately, she didn’t speak English … though I have a funny feeling she was asking me if Sophie is a boy, or a girl. Hmmm. I still like her haircut.
The graffiti seems to be in English often, though. I’ve been watching this Obama graffiti over the past month or so. I think HOPE is winning.
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).
