Simple Danish Newsletter #25

Hi friends,

We hope you are having a great week so far.
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If you are comfortable with Danish at an intermediate or advanced level, we think you should consider changing the language of your smartphone to Danish. It’s a bit of a gimmicky trick, but we still think it is worth doing to improve your immersion in the language.

As you are probably already very familiar with your phone, you can use that familiarity to your advantage and use it to help you learn new vocabulary.

In previous newsletters, we have talked about the difference between “active” and “passive” learning and tried to argue in favour of the active kind, but there is also plenty of research to support a more passive approach.

Here you think of languages as something you “acquire” (in the same way infants don’t go to school to learn a language) more than something you learn by sitting down, and cramming all the grammatical rules of a language.

We like to think the best approach is somewhere in the middle, with a heavy emphasis on input, but also being deliberate about how you practice your Danish. You can read more about this in this previous newsletter (How to improve your Danish the fastest).

Changing your phone language to Danish is a teeny-tiny change, but it might be worth it to squeeze in a few more minutes of “input” per day.

Note for beginners: We don’t recommend changing your phone language if you are just beginning. It might be more annoying than helpful at this stage, and it can thus be slightly demotivating. If you are unsure, then try it out, you can always change back.

A lot of the value will come from the apps you use that will change their interface language at the same time, which most popular apps will do. If not, you might need to change it in the individual app settings.

What do you think? Have you tried changing your phone language to Danish? What did you think?

Our Favourite Things ❤️

Quote we like:

Video we are rewatching

​“Where is Scandinavia?” by the always great CGP Grey. What’s the difference between Scandinavia, the Scandinavian Peninsula, and “The Nordic Countries”?
Fear not, all is humorously explained in this video. The video is from 2015 but it still holds up. CGP Grey in general has tons of great educational content, that we also can highly recommend checking out.

Idiom of the Week: At hvile på laurbærrene

Literally; to rest on the laurels

This is an identical idiom to the English “to rest on one’s laurels”. It is used to refer to someone who becomes complacent or stops making efforts after achieving success.

The etymology of the phrase is kind of interesting as it is based on the fact that the laurel wreath became synonymous with success (from the Roman tradition of awarding victors in games a laurel wreath).
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I am not sure when exactly the idiom came around, but I like the picture of someone literally resting in a bed of laurels.

For Example:

A) Danmark vand OL Guld i Håndbold

B) Det er rigtigt, men der er ikke tid til at hvile på laurbærrene. Det er vigtigt at de holder formen i top.

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Word of the Week: En krammer

Literally; a hugger

“En krammer” refers to a big, warm hug from someone. Normally you would say “et kram” when talking about a hug, but Danes will often say “en krammer” instead.

For Example:

• Kom og giv mor en krammer inden du går.
• Skal du have en krammer?

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That’s all we had for you for this week. Feel free to reply to this email with comments, suggestions or questions, as we read and reply to all emails 😊

Kram fra,

Antonina & Rasmus

Denmark&Me