Teach Yourself Danish


Printed:	1992	Author:	H. A. Koefoed
Publisher:	English Universities Press Ltd	ISBN:	0828883114
Suppliers:

Paperback (June 1992), usually ships within 4-6 weeks.
Amazon Review
Reviewer: doug@gorm.com
Years ago I bought this book to learn Danish. Its texts and exercises tell the story of a Danish farm family, with a son named Ole. Not long after I started reading the book I was having lunch in a restaurant and three young women sat at the table right next to me. They spoke what I was sure was Danish. So I decided to try out what I learned from the book: "Er du dansk?" Which means, "Are you Danish?" They had no idea what I was saying, but one thing led to another and one of them became my wife. She comes from a Danish farm, just like the family in the book, and even has a brother named Ole. Over the years, from listening to what she says to me, I've picked up a few other Danish terms (for example, "idiot"), but this is the book that got me going.
The text starts simple but, even early on, gives a real feel for what Danish culture is like. The typical chapter has a short dialogue, glossary, grammatical notes, and exercises, as well as "ordsprog" and "talemaader," proverbs and sayings which give you a great introduction to the sly and ironic Danish sense of humor. The book provides an especially clear grasp of the "Jysk folkekarakter," the character of the people of Jutland, which is pretty impressive for an introductory language-learning text. If you work at it, after a while you even come to bits and pieces of the Ugly Duckling in Danish, the language of Hans Christian Andersen. This book may be a Special Order, but in my view it's well worth waiting for.