Re: I'm back, sort of

>Speaking three different Germanic languages seems to have created all kinds
>of unhelpful software in my brain. The Germanic Cognate Finder keeps telling
>me that the English for 'to write' is _to scribe_, and the really annoying
>one was suggesting _commune_ for _municipality_ (Sw. _kommun_)...
lol (or at least quietly chucking at the idea of the "German Cognate Finder"...


>Date:         Mon, 22 Sep 2003 13:07:14 -0400
>From:         Isidora Zamora <isidora@...>
>Subject:      Re: I'm back, sort of
>
> >I'm only bilingual (English and Danish, and it might be stretching it to
> >call me truly bilingual in Danish, especially these days), not trilingual,
> >but I did have some interesting things happen while I was learning
> >Danish.  The first one was that when did not know or could not think of
>the
> >Danish word for something, my mind would start to put the Latin word into
> >the sentence.  (I had just finished taking 3 yearsof Latin and one year
>of
> >French prior to going to Denmark.)  When I didn't have the word, something
> >in my mind seemed to be saying, "No, no, *not* you L1!  Use something
> >else."  So it tried to, with rather amusing results.  (Though I don't think
> >I ever actually put a Latin word into the middle of a Danish sentence, I
> >just wanted to.)
>
>That's something I've been wondering.
>Does it disturb you when Danes use English loanwords in Danish? Because I
>used to jump every time I heard a Finnish loanword in any other language,
>but I thought it might be different for speakers of languages that get
>borrowed
>more often.
I got used to it, but I found it strange to hear "TV" and "computer" in the
middle of Danish sentences.  (But, of course, you had to know what gender
they were in Danish.)  Danish does also have "fjernsyn" for TV.  It's a
little harder for me to pronounce, but I prefer the native word.  I think
some of the loan words into Danish that stand out as being English, may be
in fact from French or Latin.  One thing that happened to me once while my
host family and I were sitting around the dinner table conversing is that I
wanted to say something, but didn't know the Danish words for it.  So I
asked, "How do you say 'economic depression' in Danish?"  "Økonomisk
depression," came the answer.  I didn't know whether to feel stupid or amazed.

Isidora

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