drue wilding

When i started listening to Danish radio, i quickly discovered that i love Rasmus Seebach. It seemed as if every time a Danish song came on that i liked, it turned out to be by Rasmus Seebach. Sometimes i've looked up his song lyrics to understand them better, sometimes to learn them. I even learned one song well enough to sing it at karaoke!

Tonight i was listening to some random songs on Spotify and this song "Glad Igen" came on. I've heard it many times, but never tried to find out the lyrics or work out what this song is about. By the end of the first verse i realised i was understanding all the words without even trying. I listened to the whole song and sure enough, i understood every word. As a bonus, when i found the video, i also recognised the place in Copenhagen where it was filmed!



My Danish listening skills have increased dramatically in the last couple of months. It's barely an effort any more. I now listen to the news not just for practice, but actually to find out what's going on in the world. I watch Danish YouTubers because i find them funny, and they're easy to understand. This week i finished listening to the Danish translation of "The Little Prince" and was happy to find that i understood almost all of it, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I met my friend Rachel tonight and we chatted for hours in Danish, and it felt so easy and natural.

When I moved to Denmark, i wanted to know what it would feel like to become fluent in a second language. I wasn't sure i could do it. Now i know i can do it, it's getting easier all the time, and it feels wonderful! And the more i understand, the more i love the language!

I remember a time, not so long ago, when I felt really pleased with myself for going a whole weekend without speaking English. Now I think it’s happened at least two more times, and I barely even noticed!

Last weekend was especially good. It’s not like I was actively trying to avoid English, but no reason to speak English came up. Which was great because it included going to a bike shop to get new lights fitted, arranging to buy something on the internet, cycling round and picking it up, and having Elses family come round for dinner and happily chatting Danish with them.

It always makes me feel good when I can communicate the things I want, understand the questions and reply to them, maybe not perfectly, but well enough to get the message across.

And the meal was especially good. It was Mortens Aften, an annual Danish tradition, and I remember the same people coming round last year. I think that was the first time I met the lady who I now call Farmor like I’m part of her family. Last year, I remember not understanding much of the dinner conversation at all, other than a few words. This year I could follow every topic, even if I couldn’t contribute much, at least I knew what they were talking about. It felt to me like they were speaking a lot slower. Of course they’re not, it’s my speed of processing that is so much faster now.

Else and I speak mostly Danish at home but not exclusively. There was a period of several weeks when we spoke no English at all, but I felt it affected our friendship a bit. Because my vocabulary is somewhat limited I felt I couldn’t fully express myself, so our conversations were a bit superficial, and I felt we weren’t so close. Then one night we had a dinner together and spontaneously switched to English and it felt so much better for me. So now we have a good mix, mostly Danish but we’re both okay with using English when it feels appropriate.

Sometimes I don’t notice my progress, or I think I’m slower than I want to be. But other times I sit back and listen to myself having a conversation in Danish and I have to think, if a few years ago I were to hear myself now, I would be astonished!

It’s been about 9 months now, and my Danish conversation skills are improving all the time. It’s a good time to write about it before I forget what a big deal it is. Things which are a big deal very quickly become normal. I have to stop and remind myself, “Hold on, that would have been much harder a few months ago!”

For one thing, I found myself having lunch with my boss yesterday, just the two of us. There have been very few times I’ve had a 1-1 lunch with someone. Previous times have been quite a mental challenge for me, both understanding what someone is saying and working out what I want to say and how to say it. Highly rewarding, but challenging. Nearly always I have lunch with a group of colleagues and I do far more listening than speaking. But this lunch with my boss was easy. We only spoke Danish, I think I understood everything he said, and it was reasonably comfortable for me to have a casual conversation together.

Another good thing happened today. I needed to talk to a colleague about lots of potential bugs I was finding, and we did that entirely in Danish. It’s always a bit easier with someone when we’ve never spoken English together before. Even when I struggled to understand, my colleague was patient and didn’t switch to English but just explained again in different words. I always appreciate that. When I was obviously flailing with Danish numbers (1196 was said “elleve seksoghalvfems”) we simply changed to reading out individual numbers (ie “en-en-ni-seks”).

Side note: I just realised I have very little trouble with 95 (femoghalvfems) and 99 (nioghalvfems) .. probably because they seem to come up a lot on tv adverts. But 96 was a tricky number today!

On the whole, when people talk directly to me I can now understand almost everything they say, both in gist and often literally almost every word they say. I’m good at formulating my words and expressing myself, even sometimes disagreeing, which is always harder, I find. But today when somebody had made a false assumption about my testing, I was able to correct them. I think it helps that we study “argumentation” in Danish lessons, so disagreement is not as scary as it once was!

My ability to understand others has undoubtedly been helped by watching lots of Forbrydelsen, Borgen and Regnen in Danish with Danish subtitles, as well as listening to the radio. Saturday morning’s Mads & Monopolet show is particularly easy to understand now. People email in with their personal difficulties, and a panel of people discuss what they think they should do. Traffic and weather reports are getting easy to understand too, because they follow a familiar pattern. Regional news is slightly easier to understand than national news, but it varies a lot depending on how familiar I am with the topic.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention, I attend a standup every morning now, and give my status in Danish with barely any thought at all. See, it’s amazing how quickly these things become normal! It was only a few weeks ago that would have felt like a major achievement!

My conversational awareness is beginning to shift from content to accent and flow. I’m increasingly aware of how British I sound when speaking Danish, and how words come in bursts as I’m obviously think-speak-think-speak. These are things I was only minimally aware of until recently. In fact, I believed my Danish accent was quite good until recently.. but it’s a sign that I’m better able to hear other people now, that I can notice the ways in which their speech is different from mine.

All of these things are great signs of progress, I think!

I remember it was only 1 month ago that i first spoke at the weekly friday morning department meeting. I was so nervous to speak Danish in front of so many people. I had prepared pretty much word-for-word what i wanted to say, i'd practised several times and had notes written down to help me.

Today i spoke again at the meeting. I actually gave a demo of running some test automation. I didn't prepare anything. I knew i could fall back to English if necessary, so i wasn't too nervous. And I managed it entirely in Danish. Not as smooth as i'd like, but i said enough to get the message across and explain what was happening on the screen.

I even managed to answer a few questions that people had.

A very good indicator of my increased confidence in just one month!