After 1.5 Years, I Still Like Studying Danish. Should I be surprised?

It's now a beautiful fall day in Minneapolis, and strangely it feels like summer. If you've never been I would highly encourage August/September as the months to book. As the season wanes and thoughts of changes swirl in my head, I'm reminded that it's getting deeper into my second year of Danish study.

Of note, the Danish program at the university here suffered a loss when our able and influential professor had to leave the country due to financial squabbles between the school and the bureaucracy in Denmark (something about double taxation, which I've been spared the more unseemly details). Nevertheless, it had appeared he was faced basically paying to live here and teach us. I can't say I blame him for feeling obligated to go back to Copenhagen. I'm sure most would do the same. The school did not find a replacement for him in time for fall semester, and here we are - uden vores lærer.

That aside, I've kept up as best I can in the busy swirl of life that includes 3 classes, a full-time job, a lovely wife and two lazy dogs. My current regime includes reading and translating as best I can from the big papers (Berlingske, JP). Still they a bit beyond me, mostly I am able to get the sense of an article - and as I read the translation from Google, I usually have a good number of "A-HA" moments as I make the connection between the words I could not understand and their very similar root structure to English. I have a feeling a glass of wine and a looser mind would hasten some of these connections.

Also, I would say the beginner's web site www.ligetil.nu - which give a simplified version of the news - is a great resource which I don't read nearly enough. This site still humbles me as I try to get those little words like "stadig" that hold a sentence together. If you really want to get going with reading Danish, this is a great place to visit every day. Note to self!

Lastly, I've really been overdosing on podcasts from DR1 and TV Avisen. On the way to work, as I sleep, working out. As often as I can I surround myself with the Danish language. I realize that my speech and speaking skills are waning without a proper Dane to interact with. Also, writing as I used to 10 sentences per week for class is not a possibility. But I can understand more of these regular new sources every day and listening I believe is the most important element of language acquisition in the first place.

I hope very much that my passing the University's language proficiency exam (LPE) was not in vain and that I'll be able to spend more time visiting, living and working in Denmark to get better and better! For now it continues to be an enjoyable and beautiful language, I just enjoy the process and the people I meet!