What's the point?

Today was a dreadful weather day.  Rain, sleet, a few heavy flakes of snow, wind.  Nothing like Seattle's snow and ice storm but I was very happy to be inside.  Inside, doing homework.  I sat with the wind and sleet behind me and dove into prepositions, definite and indefinite articles and verb tenses.  Prepositions are often baffling.  It is a matter of convention that you say you are "mad on someone", "good to Danish" (i.e. you are competent in Danish), "the shoes are too big to me".  And then there is "af" which when I look it up in the dictionary means: of, off, from, by, on or with.

Yesterday's class was a little discouraging.  We studied pronunciation.  Oh those vowels!  There are 3 vowels that all sound like "a" to the untrained (read "my") ear.  Today I heard an Oxford educated translator who knows many languages but teaches here in Denmark who said that the Danish pronunciation is the most difficult of any language he has encountered.  OK, that made me feel better.  Later on in class we worked on rhythm and fluidity of sentences.  Not only does my tongue trip up on words but when spoken quickly, half of the letters and syllables disappear.  "Sig til mig"   (see til my) becomes something quite different when tripping off the tongues of Danes.  I sometimes wish for thought bubbles over peoples' heads that would have Danish subtitles.  Then I would be just fine.

It all gradually improves though.  Yesterday, as I listened to the interview with the translator of Danish poetry, I realized I understood most of the story.   (And they were both speaking Danish).  When I watch the news or listen to the radio,  I am getting the message.  As I read the newspaper yesterday  (the Danish equivalent of the New York Times), I read through a commentary and understood it without frequent trips to the dictionary or asking Nhat, "what does.....mean?".

Classes will for me probably be over after mid-Feb.  I am taking a frequent flier trip back to Seattle to see the kids, grand kids and marvel over Meredith's pregnancy and help her start making plans.  Part of me would like to continue and take the last class in order to pass the national language exam in May and June, the final proof of competency in Danish but I don't think I will be able to stay in the course with missing two weeks of school during my trip home and taking time off for visitors.  That test proves one can speak and write on some adequate level but it takes forever to get the idiomatic language.  Who knew that "join the crowd" here, is "come into the warm"?

So I will continue to sharpen my pencils every morning for awhile.  That is one of the pleasures of school, using a pencil again.  I take these odd triangular pencils I bought from the $2 store (everything costs twice as much here) and watch the shavings drop off and have that lovely feeling of the sharp pencil to the page.  Now if I could just put my brain in a sharpener.  That would be helpful!!