From the Labyrinth

There's a funny sort of mental thing happening for me these days in learning Danish..... any free time comes front-loaded with an overwhelming sensation of SHOULD.   It's just like college.  

Reading a book or magazine =  I should at least be reading in Danish

Listening to music =  I should be listening to the Danish CD's. 

Knitting = I should be studying.

Sewing = I should be studying.

Shopping = I should be studying.

Cooking = I should be studying.

Sleeping = I should be studying.


That means there is no free time, which I had completely forgotten from my college days.   So, that sort of made me feel sorry for myself....especially since the HARDEST thing to learn in Danish is how to p-r-o-n-o-u-n-c-e......which doesn't come so easily with simple studying.

goals...these are the goals of intensive language training.

In the last few weeks, I have slid into an emotional slump -- numbly moving through the maze of corridors at our language school -- feeling like I will NEVER know how to say "d" or "v" correctly. Sometimes "r" disappears, in fact.

Then I walked by this classroom:

It stopped me in my tracks to see what I COULD be learning, if I were in a parallel universe :-).  From what I can see, this guy in here has it MUCH harder than I do on my worst linguistic day.  This language is Tigryani, which is the ancient language spoken in these countries:

Eritrea and Ethiopia

That's not even getting into the stories from the guy learning Mandarin. 

a 'shy' photo through the door window....

There is apparently a word that can mean "mother" and "horse" and "question" and twenty other things in Chinese depending on how you intone. 

Suddenly, Danish doesn't seem quite as hard after all.  Although, I still have the nagging sensation I should be over at http://www.dr.dk/ listening to news.....