Perhaps you know the situation. You’re in the supermarket buying a bag of groceries and have used your best and most correct Danish for the transaction. But when the check-out assistant knowingly nods and turns around, all you hear is \u00bbHun-\u00e5d kroner, tak!\u00ab.<\/p>\n
What did she say? Oh, \u00bbhundrede\u00ab! But then you’ve probably learned to pronounce this much more distinctly. You would thereby have a technically correct pronunciation, but nothing like what the Danes actually speak. They are much more careless.<\/p>\n
Frustrated?<\/p>\n
Fear not, there’s a meaning behind the sloppy speech. In fact, sloppy speech, in the right way that is, is actually for the most proficient language users.<\/p>\n
\u00bbIt is the phonetic reductions in speech that reveal just how familiar you are with the language,\u00ab says PhD student at Copenhagen Business School, Ruben Schachtenhaufen.<\/p>\n
\u00bbNative speakers are used to emphasizing only that which is essential or novel in a conversation. This means reducing the pronunciation of everything which can meaningfully be left out. We do this by omitting less important sounds, contracting words, cutting their endings and so on,\u00ab he explains<\/p>\n
In other words, by being careless you’re actually showing that you’re familiar with it.<\/p>\n
Schachtenhaufen is currently trying to pin down the rules for reduction \u2013 rules that have not yet been defined. <\/p>\n
Later on, this will hopefully result in an actual system and create a basis for new and innovative ways of teaching Danish to foreigners.<\/p>\n
Until then, what should you bear in mind as an international student or researcher struggling with the Danish?<\/p>\n
It will come as a relief to know that you don’t have to pronounce each word distinctly to speak like a Dane.<\/p>\n
Also, if you attend Danish grammar classes, remember that although grammar is essential for knowing how sentences work, it is rarely reflected in actual, spoken Danish.<\/p>\n