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Danish with an accent - a thorn in the flesh
M.Litt. External lecturer at Copenhagen University immigrant teacher for the Municipality of Copenhagen |
Every time there is a confrontation between immigrants and Danes, or every time one raises the question of why companies do not employ more immigrants, one hears comments such as: "why on earth don't they learn to speak proper Danish" or "the way they speak doesn't sound Danish enough" (Let me straight away make clear that by 'immigrants'I mean people who have come to Denmark or people who have grown up in Denmark but with another language than Danish as their first language.) Danish with an accent, in other words, is like a thorn in the flesh for Danes - and it is this thorn that is to be the subject matter of the following.
I wish to try and find out exactly what it is that the Danes cannot tolerate. Where do we feel the pain? There must be a measurable linguistic parameter.
One can immediately put forward some categories that are interesting to take a closer look at:
In the following I would like to look closer at each of these points. At the risk of sounding stuck-up or snooty, I intend to allow myself to generalise from my own experiences to all other Danes. Likewise, from individual immigrants to all immigrants. Well now, I know that is not nice, and I am well aware that in a scientific context it is unacceptable. But it is probably good enough to give a first-hand impression of the conditions and to point to areas in communication that deserve a closer look.
Let us for a moment take a broad look at the Danish language. We often speak about the language as if it was a quite clearly defined unit, one that could easily be distinguished from all surrounding languages. The fact of the matter is that there is no unequivocal definition of what Danish is!
Danish is the common denominator for that which we all can immediately accept as being Danish. It is difficult to be more precise than that. A language is only a language if there is a group of people who speak it and who are of the opinion that that which they speak is one and the same thing. 'Bornholmsk', 'thybomål', 'årøsk' and 'københavnsk' are all just as Danish, even though it can at times be difficult for the one to understand what the other is saying.
In the classic dialects and the present regional languages there are considerable differences in vowel and consonant qualities in the pronunciation of the same words. As Danes, then, we are used to hearing Danish pronounced in different ways without this leading to violent confrontations. (I am, of course, not blind to the fact that in schools, as in other social institutions, this can often give rise to teasing/mockery, etc.)
Foreigner Danish is often characterised by incorrect single sounds. No matter where in the world one comes from, it is almost certain that Danish has a more differentiated vowel system than the foreigner's native language. Danish has 21 vowel phonemes as compared, for example, with Arabic, which has three! In quite a number of languages the difference between voiced and voiceless is used to distinguish between the stops b/p, d/t and g/k In Danish, however, these phonemes are kept apart by means of aspiration, i.e. no air/air.
Many languages (including Somalian) do not distinguish between f/v, and sounds such as r and l can vary considerably from the one language to the other. The sound h can also be pronounced in ways that differ greatly around the world.
So the question is whether it can really be these 'petitesses' that cause Danes to get a mental block. My answer has to be no. If we compare standard Danish with Jutland dialect, for example, we find that many of the named differences also apply.
In many Jutland dialects the vowels differ somewhat from those of standard Danish. They can be a bit more open or a bit more closed - but that does not disturb us. In Northern Jutland dialect v in front of a back vowel is pronounced w . That is unknown in the standard language. Nor does the Northern Jutland pronunciation of h in front of j and v exist in standard Danish - but that does not disturb us either.
And so on and so forth. The fact of the matter is that we can accept a pronunciation that is quite a bit different from our own without further ado. The problem is that the boundaries for the acceptability of pronunciation are fluid. When are we dealing with a flat a and when has it become æ?
Differences in the pronunciation of consonants is something of which we are less conscious! This is presumably because they are very stable within the Danish language area. Whether stops are pronounced with or without that little breath of air makes all the difference between words such as bande/pande, dale/tale and gilde/kilde. The most frequent foreigner pronunciation is that words with p/t/k are pronounced with Danish b/d/g, and the words we pronounce with the latter become voiced, which does not have any function in Danish and which we therefore do not expect to hear. The foreigner does make a distinction, but unfortunately it is one that Danish ears are not used to picking up. For us it just sounds as if the foreigner says, for example, gardofler instead of kartofler [potatoes].
Pronunciation of Danish with 'thick ls' ( known to us from American English), or 'rolling rs' we can either find charming or frightful, although these pronunciations under no circumstances can give rise to difficulties of comprehension, since there are no other words they could be confused with. Similarly, replacing vwith w cannot give rise to confusion - only, at most, aversion.
A different sort of problem arises when it comes to the exclusion of sounds. This is what happens when, for example, someone from Asia has problems with pronouncing clusters of consonants. The combinations st and sk, in particular, cause difficulty. In by far the most cases the exclusion of sounds creates the possibility of the receiver hearing a different word than the one that was intended. Often the context will decide the matter, but something unexpected takes place and the receiver has to make an extra effort to understand the utterance.
The opposite is the case with, for example, Somalis. Because of their own language they also have difficulties in understanding clusters of consonants, but unlike Asians, Somalis have a tendency to insert an extra vowel between the consonants, so that in each syllable there is a certain balance. Just think what can happen with the name Ernst. (One of the biggest consonantal clusters we have in the Danish language is Ernst's bil [Ernst'_s car].)
Just as with the exclusion of sounds, the insertion of sounds can create confusion for the receiver. Most frequently, however, the result is not a different word but, on the other hand, something completely unknown.
One of the best rules to have been implemented in Danish spelling is the one that says that a short vowel is followed by two consonants (either a doubled consonant, e.g. læss' or two different consonants that form a group, e.g. fisk) The rule is simple and does not cause any problems for Danes, but it does for foreigners. This can scarcely be because foreigners have difficulty in seeing the difference between vowels and consonants. On the contrary, it is my impression that the vast majority of my immigrant pupils have a clearer view of this phenomenon than most of the first-year BA students of Danish! Is a possible explanation that immigrants are more logical, following through the consequence of a development that is in the process of taking place? For a shift would seem to be taking place, a vowel lengthening that seems mainly to have affected a in front of a double consonant, e.g. in such words as kaffe, jakke, frakke.
Perhaps the biggest snag in this connection is that the rule about the two consonants cannot take account of whether they belong to one and the same syllable (i.e. two different consonants in the group) or whether the consonants belong to separate syllables (udt-ale as opposed to ud-tale- both are possible spelling structures in Danish.) Making decision as to which requires the recognition of a word-picture. One has to be able to decide what the maximum string of letters that can belong together means, i.e. one has to be able to divide a word into correct syllables before one can apply the rule about the length of the vowel!
Finally, a number of our foreigners come from languages where length does not play any role. We do not have to look further than to English, where length is normally accompanied by a difference in quality. So it is not possible to pronounce, for example, a short in the same way as a long. In Danish, on the other hand, it is only the measurable length that counts.
The problem foreigners have is therefore that they often pronounce all sounds as equally long - or short, for they most often choose the short sound. To our ears this results in a strange kind of machine-gun salvo. It can also often lead to words being confused (the type 'læse' [to read] as opposed to 'læsse' [to load]).
Pronunciation of Danish with mechanical stress (as is known from French) is irritating. It sounds as if Danish was being spoken in time with a regiment of soldiers on the march. This incorrect mechanical rhythm takes away the signals the receiver needs that tell him or her whether the sentence is a statement or a question. Likewise it becomes impossible to predict whether one is expected to join in the conversation with a comment.
We speak Danish in a rhythm that accords amazingly well with that of our heart! And we use the rhythm to get the conversation to hang together. When is it suitable to say 'ja' or 'hmmm' to tell the speaker that we are still listening, and when is the speaker asking us to take over? The rhythm in the sentences that is created in an alternation between pause and word stress is to a great extent the bearer of those types of signals.
Wrong stress in words is one of the absolutely greatest barriers for Danes. We simply switch off when stresses do not correspond with what we expect. In certain cases wrong stress results in changes of meaning ('forklæde as opposed to for'klæde ['apron' as opposed to 'to disguise']), but this is in fact not all that frequent. Danes simply shut down when the stress is not right. It is almost impossible for us to abstract from it.
I am convinced that those foreigners who settle in a 'glottal stop' area, i.e. the entire country with the exception of Bornholm, Møn, Falster, Lolland, the South Funen islands, Als and parts of Southern Jutland, have to learn to speak Danish with glottal stop.
Glottal stop is one of the most characteristic features of Danish, and it is to a great extent the bearer of semantic differences. Glottal stop has a word-separating significance. (In this presentation I am completely ignoring regional variations of glottal stop.)
In defence of my unyielding attitude to teaching the glottal stop it is possible to argue that the rules are very difficult - or almost impossible to learn to use without a thorough knowledge of Danish spelling structures in the 13th century and, as mentioned, that there are quite a lot of Danes who speak without using glottal stop. All that can be said about this is that the Danes who speaking without glottal stop are not unfamiliar with the 13th century spelling structure (at some subconscious level, of course!), since in all Danish dialects without glottal stop the word-separating function is achieved by using difference in length or tonal accent.
Danes are then used to hearing Danish without the glottal stop, but, it should be noted, with a different but consistent marking of word-differences that in standard Danish is marked by the glottal stop. Once this marking is lacking, in the form of far too many glottal stops (or possibly none at all), supplemented by identical length of all sounds, then our understanding begins to waver as we have to use all our energy to make head or tail of the statement.
The mechanical stress just discussed is closely linked to sentence intonation. A normal Danish sentence has slightly falling intonation towards the end. Questions, on the other hand, have flat intonation, i.e. they are at the same pitch from beginning to end. From French we are familiar with questions with rising intonation, something which a Dane finds affected - a Dane really has to work hard to overcome this feeling when practising in a class that consists almost exclusively of other Danes.
Typical of the pronunciation of many immigrants is that they simply bring with them the intonation patterns of their native language - or, possibly, from some other foreign language. This is perhaps one of the most important factors that lead to a breakdown in communication.
The flat or possibly rising intonation says to the Danish receiver that it is now his or her turn to join in the conversation, yet the sender continuous to speak without registering this fact. This creates a sort of 'Peter and the Wolf effect' The poor Dane keeps on thinking that he or she is meant to take over - but no. The pattern can of course work the other way round, making it difficult for the foreigner to know when he or she is expected to take over.
How is all this to be related to everyday teaching of immigrants? We must show our cards to the pupils and tell them that is it precisely all this that makes a Dane switch off or on. When the individual sounds reach an acceptably intelligible level, we must leave them be, unless the pupil himself or herself really wants to have an absolutely correct pronunciation.
Stress, glottal stop and sentence intonation cannot be upgraded enough, in my opinion. Here there is a considerable risk of confusing words - and that is something that is most unfortunate. Sentence intonation does not only make Danish sound Danish; it is also to a great extent a social signal to others in the conversation - and that part of communicating one should not fail to draw the learners'_ attention to. The signals work in both directions, so if the learner does not learn to react correctly to such a signal, a Danish sender gets the impression that the foreign receiver does not understand or is uninterested in what is being said. The result is that the two people involved in the conversation do not really feel that they can count on the other as a sensible person to have a conversation with.
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