Language Lessons, Part Two: A Numbers Game

B managed to sneaky enroll me in his Danish for important University people class, so now on Mondays and Wednesdays we go to class together.

(Check it out. I can actually say that in Danish. Jeg gor med B til dansk klasse hver Mandag og Ohnsdag. Vi laerer sammen).

It's an interesting mix of people. Altogether there are about 20 students--although we've been warned that attrition will be both dramatic and severe. Including B and me, four are from the US. Two are Estonian. Two are Chinese. Two are from Spain. One woman is from Japan. Another woman is Dutch, with a Swedish boyfriend. One man is from India. And of course there's a healthy group of Germans.

I feel really lucky, though, because the class is taught in a mix of Danish and English. Actually I'm a bit surprised by just how much English goes on in the class, being more used to the kind of language teacher who refuses to translate anything and just repeats the new word louder, while making faces. That's not the point, though. The point is, imagine trying to learn your third or fourth language in your second or third language. If I'm asked to translate something to English, it's easy for me. And if someone asks a question in English, I don't have to concentrate extra-hard to understand.

When I do have to concentrate extra-hard is when we do numbers. I was really excited for numbers since for a long time I could only count to twenty. This made things kind of tough at the farmer's market. Sure, I could ask for 5 tomatoes. But if they were sold by weight, I never understood the price. (Keep in mind that currently it's about 5.5 kroner to the dollar, so you really can't get a bag of anything for less than 20-something kroner). As of last night, I can theoretically count to 100. I say theoretically because it's not super intuitive. Look at this. Non-Danish speakers, indulge me here and keep an eye out for cognates.

10--ti
20--tyve
30--tredive
40--fyrre
50--halvtreds
60--tres
70--halvfjerds
80--firs
90--halvfems
100--hundred

In case you're not feeling linguistically adept, that's something like this:

Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, half-threes, threes, half-fours, fours, half-fives, one hundred.

Naturally.

I'll be learning them fast though, since I'm no codfish.* (Jeg vil gerne laere numrene; jeg skal ikke vaerer en torsk).

*A Danish expression, meaning a real moron. I think fish may figure more prominently in idioms around here than in the US. Stay tuned for more!