The pronunciation...
I seem to have great difficulties when I'm asked to speak a sentence in Danish to the microphone during the course.
In my ears I sound at least near enough to the example sentences, but almost always I fail to get it right. Even when I put the microphone near my loudspeakers and play the native speaker's voice into it, it does not register.
I don't have any problems with other languages (Dutch, German, Swedish), which I pronounce to the mic with much less effort and apparent clarity, but Danish drives me crazy. I try to mimic the sounds to the best of my ability, and eventually even escalate to exaggerate the glottal stops and the difficult semi-vowels, but to no avail.
Usually I manage to get like three of five words right, but try as I might, the crucial ones just do not register.
Am I just a sucky person, is my microphone a bummer, is Danish really such a mountainously difficult language to pronounce, or are the voice recognition algorithms so strict that my non-agile tongue just is unable to produce the necessary sounds?
Has anyone else had similar difficulties with Danish? (Lol. As if not. But still :-)
16 Comments
Um. Do you mean that Norwegian comedy show clip? I must have watched it at least two dozen times, and it still cracks me up :-)
Okay, but you'll probably have seen this already, if you've ever gone on a google tirade on Danish. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk
Ah, we reached the reply limit. Dum-de-dum... this is the video: https://youtu.be/FqgRC5sfCaQ
A comedic reflection on Norway breaking away from Denmark, published on the 200th anniversary of Norway signing their constitution.
Thanks! I burst out laughing when the bottles were delivered. Maybe I just need to down a few brewskies before I attempt the spoken exercises in Duolingo :-)
Oh, I guess I haven't seen that one. Do you happen to have a link somewhere close by?
I also struggle a lot with the Danish speaking exercises. I must have tried to say this one sentence about 20 - 30 times, when my girlfriend (who is a native Dane) gets it right instantly in one go.
Honestly I thought something was wrong with DL's voice recognition tech for the Danish course... but nope - Danish is just really challenging to pronounce.
I had the exact same difficulties, to the point where I now turn my microphone off for Danish. And I had the exact same problem with French, too. It's probably not a coincidence that both of these languages are rather less than phonetic.
I sometimes turn off the microphone too, but I would not like to give up that easily. I want to make at least a passable attempt at the pronunciation :-)
Yesterday I had the same difficulties, but today the system understands what I say from a first try. O_o Maybe it's because of my visit to a dentist? :)
That's it! We should all have anaesthetic injections in our mouths, and then our Danish will sound perfect! :D
Reminds me of...
You're not alone. I take classes here in Denmark and my teacher says that my pronunciation is more than fine, but I usually don't get even half the sentence right.
Wow. I guess, it is nigh impossible for me then. Just the other day, I could not even get "Ja" correct. In a sentence that started something like, "Ja, det er...", I only managed to get "det" correctly. Even when I tried to just say "Ja, ja, ja, ja" with varying pitches, tones, aspirations etc., I managed merely to fail. Then, I finally turned the microphone option off.
