Hands up if you’ve managed to juggle full-time working, full-time parenting,
and—oh yes—mastered the Danish language???
and—oh yes—mastered the Danish language???
If your hands have remained up, what’s your secret??? Please, do share your magical formula! I’m all ears.
If you read my last article, you’ll know that my biggest motivation for learning Danish is my children. Not only do I (desperately) want to learn to support their education journey, but I also feel it’s my parental duty to—so I can help them in exactly the same way I would have back “home.”
When you read the blogs, scroll through the Instagram feeds, and chat to
internationals or Danes from all walks of life, they say: “JOIN A LOCAL CLUB,
WATCH TV, READ MORE, SPEAK MORE, DO MORE, MORE AND MORE.” I would
wholeheartedly love to…and I’m over here asking: when?
Honestly, between work, school, dinner, and occasionally managing to sit down
without someone needing something, when exactly does ‘more’ fit in?
Now, I know I chose to bring my family to a different country, and I knew that
language learning would be part of this adventure into living in a new culture, but wow—no one ever warned me just how hard this would be.
I absolutely love learning the language (despite its complexities, idioms, and regional dialects that, let’s face it, must have been made up to confuse me), but more than 2.5 years in, I thought I’d be at least conversational by now. A lot of people have said, “Oh, don’t be so hard on yourself,” but at the same time, my children are growing up FAST, and they are lightyears ahead of me when it comes to Danish. I mean, of course they are! They are swimming in Danish all day long, while I’m gasping for air after a sentence or two. Just look at how many hours they’re exposed to Danish each week—roughly 40 hours compared to my 3 (and that’s not been continuous for me since we arrived in Denmark, by the way). It’s no wonder they’re lightyears ahead.
I’m so incredibly grateful for those 3 hours, provided through a partnership between the municipality and my employer. Without them, I’d be lost. But then there’s my husband—the “trailing male spouse” in some circles—who, as a full-time, remote-working father, got the chance to continue his job in Denmark. The thing is, since his employer considers it a “favour,” they’re not invested in his language learning. So, for him, Danish classes must be out of hours.
Which, let me tell you, is less than ideal. There are no Danish classes online or in
person before 8 am. Then there’s the school drop-off, followed by work, and then our split of the kids’ after-school activities. By the time we’re home, it’s dinner time, the kids are in bed, and we’re only starting our evening at about 8 pm. Our municipality offers classes that require 6 hours per week during the day—so that’s a no-go. The partially online classes are usually full, and there’s no option for an online teacher to focus on the ever-so necessary “udtale” (pronunciation). Private classes are a small fortune. And, honestly—when do we even have time for rest, recouping, family time, or—dare I say it—maybe even a date night?
We definitely acknowledge the privilege of me having landed a job in Denmark before arriving and my husband’s ability to keep his digital nomad status. But even with all that, we want to feel included and integrated. We’re willing to meet halfway, and we genuinely want to learn the language. We’re doing our fair share of DuoLingo, watching a show or two in Danish, and reading our children’s school messages in
Danish. Yet, we’re still struggling to get to a point where Google Translate isn’t a
permanent member of the family.
So, how do we get to a point where we can actually understand what’s happening around us, make Danish friends, and, you know, not feel like Google Translate is our permanent lodger? Time will tell. In the meantime, I hope anyone reading this is either nodding in sympathy, offering a virtual hug, or—fingers crossed—sending some top-secret tips my way!
