Some of you out there might not think it's a big deal, but it is to me because I don't live in a country that speaks Danish (or "where Danish is spoken"), so I often see such replies in English. But to see it Danish? It makes the whole message special!
Here's a part of it (I took out the names and dates, hopefully correctly), titled "Ferie":
Jeg holder ferie i ugerne...
Såfremt din mail angår Sprogligt...er du velkommen til at kontakte...i uge...Centret holder ferielukket i uge...
BEMÆRK VENLIGST: din e-mail vil ikke blive automatisk videresendt.
Med venlig hilsen
To Danes it might be mundane, but not to me!
6 comments:
WOW! This is amazing. I know where you're coming from though -- I tend to react in a similar way when 'exposed to' a message in a language that I am somewhat unfamiliar with, or simply did not expect to see :-)
I guess it must be a bit strange for those of my online friends who are native English speakers. They know me only in an English speaking context. Same with my foreign friends; when they've been visiting me in Denmark or overheard a conversation I've had say with a member of my family. They are so surprised because they never hear or see me communicate in Danish...it's not part of their life with me, if that makes sense?
Yeah, it makes sense. I've been living in the US for so long, I don't have such a split :D
I know what you mean -- it's such an exotic connection, where commonplace things become fantastic...the little circle the "a", the slash through the "o"... it makes you wonder how other people express themselves, how they construct their written thoughts, etc... it's almost like breaking a secret code (although you still can't decipher the content!).
You have an interesting blog -- glad to have stumbled upon it.
It seems like the more you're exposed to, the more you want to be exposed to, and when it comes to language, there's a lot to discover.
Thanks for the compliment btw :D
James adn mj, I totally agree :-) Language(s) is (are) such wonderful codes! I also do believe that the whole 'construction of written thoughts' and what it may say about a given culture is a very interesting aspect.
The Danish alphabet contains 3 more letters than the English: æ/Æ, ø/Ø and Å/å (the old-fashioned way of denoting 'å' was by writing a double a: aa. You still come across that in e.g. Aalborg, the town I am from. People living in Aalborg ALWAYS spell it this way. Whereas people from other places often spell it Ålborg. It just doesn't look right to me ;-)
The Swedish equivalents of æ, ø and å are ä/Ä, ö/Ö, and å/Å. In case you're interested....
Two languages that I find absolutely amazing to look at (and very exotic) are Islandic and Faroese! Wow.
Anyway: MJ, you must have received yet another autoreply in Danish yesterday as I am off again next week :-)
I did receive your "ferie" reply yesterday--neato!
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