[ɜ.ˈmæˀl.jə]

if you like my posts, consider rb'ing them since tumblr has basically no algorithm // amalie / 26 / lingustics student // danish native / fluent in english // main: @vikingqueer

[vikinglanguage]

Amalie’s original content masterpost

Since tumblr’s page feature has failed me, this is now a post that I will keep periodically updated.

This is an attempt at keeping a list of my posts about Danish (and bits of other languages). If you’re looking for a specific post that you’re almost 100% certain I created, but it’s not on the list here’s my tag for original posts, and here’s my tag for posts about Danish.

Basics: Danish numbers – A defense

The “Danish – An Introduction” series: pt. 1: expressions of politeness / basics pt. 2: nouns pt. 3: prepositions pt. 4: determiners pt. 5: adjectives pt. 6: verbs pt. 7: pronouns pt. 8: adverbs pt. 9: conjunctions

A little more than 625 basic words in Danish

~300 Danish concepts

Vocabulary lists: Halloween in Danish

Denmark, Scandinavia, and the Nordic region in Danish

Tea in Danish

Winter in Danish

Desserts in Danish

Kraftedme! – Swearing in Danish

An assortment of more or less ridiculous Danish phrases to incorporate into your day-to-day life!

Keeping a diary in Danish

Dreamy stuff in Danish

Knitting in Danish

Valentine’s Day in Danish

An assortment of more or less ridiculous Danish phrases to incorporate into your day-to-day life! (part the 2nd)

Top ten Danish sayings according to me

Grammar: Use of pronouns in Danish

A fairly comprehensive post about Danish gender neutral pronouns

Ask about gender neutral pronouns and links for three academic papers on the subject

Music: Dansk julemusik

modersmål (playlist of all the Danish music I could think of)

An attempt at transcribing Os to eller hva’ by Michael Falch

ESC 2018 Finale songs that aren’t in English

Speaking – how do?:

Danish filler words (”like”)

How to pronounce hygge

Use of formal you (De) in Danish

Three spoken Danish things you won’t learn in class (extraposition, det/så, and avoiding inversion)

How to pronounce soft d

Ham/hende den

Miscellaneous: The difference between “at mangle” and “at behøve”

Beating people to death in Danish vs. Swedish

Being bored and boring in Danish

An unnecessarily long explanation of vår/høst and forår/efterår in Danish and other North Germanic languages

The difference between “at træne” and “at øve”

How to write “æ/Æ” by hand

What it’s like to live and work with 6 people of 5 different nationalities and none of you is a native English speaker

A list of random words I learned while taking Spanish at uni

Brød [ˈbʁœðˀ]

Recipe for Danish pancakes

[vikinglanguage]

tanker og bønner? næh, tanker OM bønner <3

[vikinglanguage]

tanker.......

[vikinglanguage]

tanker og bønner? næh, tanker OM bønner <3

[chiara-klara-claire]

Er der nogen som ville gerne gøre lidt sprog-tandem med mig? Jeg ville elske at øve mig i dansk 🇩🇰

🇮🇹 Jeg kan hjælpe med italiensk (modersmål), og snakker flydende engelsk, fransk, svensk, lidt japansk, finsk og islandsk

[translatingpostsintoafrikaans]

ek besef nou dat Internasionale Moedertaaldag (21 Februarie) en Tumblr se Gebruik jou eie taal dag (7 Meimaand) twee verskillende vierings is. hoe meer geleenthede om taaldiversiteit met mekaar te deel, hoe beter!

[spyld]

THE DAY OF LANGUAGES!!!

This 7th of May, 2026, we use our own language again!

If your language, native or not, is something other than English, on May 7th you're encouraged to speak that language all day!

You’ll blog in your chosen language(s) all day: text posts, replies, tags (except triggers and organisational tags).

Regardless of what language people choose to speak to you, you can answer in your own.

Non-vocal, non-written languages (like sign language and dialects) are more than welcome!

English native speakers can participate in any other language they're studying/have studied/know.

The tag is gonna be #Speak Your Language Day or #spyld for short.

Please submit me some language facts for me to share on this day <3

Pinned post and FAQ

[vikinglanguage]

YOOO today is speak your language day. hvis jeg da bare havde vidst det, så havde jeg sandelig planlagt noget interessant at sige :)

[dedalvs]

I did an in depth presentation on syllables for a conlang class back in 2021. I think it's a pretty good low level introduction for those interested.

[official-lauchzwiebel]

I wish all people making fun of dialects a very happy DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE

[vikingqueer]

hey

https://www.tumblr.com/vikingqueer/814729200548364288?source=share

to these tags

please explain. what did you mean by this

that is spanish?

Hi sorry this is long, you activated the linguist. My tone is a bit weird in this, I hope it doesn't come off as aggressive.

It's in reference to the last comment, "anglophones when they recognise cognates", of course referring to the the previous comment about memes that transcends languages.

While English is a Germanic language, it is heavily influenced by Old French due to the Normans' invasion of England in 1066, in addition to lots of loans from Middle French. I don't know the exact history, and frankly I think linguists in general are overly concerned with English, but that's not even a relevant thing to discuss here.

Basically, the English lexicon has a lot of words that originally came from French. This means that English tends to have a lot of cognates with Romance languages, like Spanish, because French is a Romance language.

In the case of this specific post, the cognates are of course nerviosa and tranquilo, easily recognisable by English speakers as nervous and tranquil.

Anglo-French, or Anglo-Norman, was the administrative language of England post 1066.

I don't know if there is a "best" source for the etymology of English words. Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com both make it sound like tranquil came direct from Latin, and Wiktionary makes it sound like that is the case for nervous, so like I don't know. Either way, they still came from a Romance language (Latin).

As for sistema/system, that's a loan from Greek, both in Spanish and English.

TL;DR: you asked a linguist a question about language, so you got a super long answer. The answer is yea that post is in Spanish, but it is easily understable for English speakers and English speakers really need to remember that time English imported like half its current vocab from French before claiming that a meme transcends language. A post does not "transcend language" when every word in the post is an easily recognisable cognate. Also Greek is there.

[vikinglanguage]

heated rivalry vocab list incoming because im sure i can translate gay sex better than any machine

and im only half joking

[vikinglanguage]

It's honestly tragic how little critical thought is utilised when people use machine generated stuff these days.

I die a little bit every time Instagram hits me with "[name] har føjet noget til vedkommendes historie", because I can assure you [name] did not do that. I am sure that "[name] har føjet noget til sin historie", but apparently Instagram couldn't be bothered to check whether a single line of machine translation that is a BIG part of the notifications they send to probably hundreds of thousands of users daily is actually correct Danish. They literally just need one person with a rudimentary understanding of Danish grammar to look at that for like 3 seconds, but clearly that's too much effort for them.

[vikinglanguage]

sorry about the complaining, i'm just sick of skills like mine (linguistic knowledge from, y'know, getting a university degree) being devalued because "machines can do that" because NO THEY FUCKING CAN'T. also you know who helped design those fucking machine? computer linguists.

[vikinglanguage]

@jpn-langblr please say sike. jeg vil ik mere.

[vikinglanguage]

@benchisanidiot let's be real, for the small price of helt gratis kunne man sgu nok finde heated rivalry et eller andet sted på internettet og selv kopiere det ind i google oversæt. like not to condone piracy men jeg synes faktisk det er mere utilgiveligt at forlange at folk betaler penge for en glorificeret google-oversættelse. i det mindste må man gå ud fra at forfatteren modtager royalties i et eller andet omfang.

og nu jeg i øvrigt har danskere i mine notes, så husk lige at stemme til valget på tirsdag, også hvis du har tænkt dig at stemme blankt

[vikinglanguage]

It's honestly tragic how little critical thought is utilised when people use machine generated stuff these days.

I die a little bit every time Instagram hits me with "[name] har føjet noget til vedkommendes historie", because I can assure you [name] did not do that. I am sure that "[name] har føjet noget til sin historie", but apparently Instagram couldn't be bothered to check whether a single line of machine translation that is a BIG part of the notifications they send to probably hundreds of thousands of users daily is actually correct Danish. They literally just need one person with a rudimentary understanding of Danish grammar to look at that for like 3 seconds, but clearly that's too much effort for them.

[vikinglanguage]

sorry about the complaining, i'm just sick of skills like mine (linguistic knowledge from, y'know, getting a university degree) being devalued because "machines can do that" because NO THEY FUCKING CAN'T. also you know who helped design those fucking machine? computer linguists.

[vikinglanguage]

@jpn-langblr please say sike. jeg vil ik mere.

[vikinglanguage]

It's honestly tragic how little critical thought is utilised when people use machine generated stuff these days.

I die a little bit every time Instagram hits me with "[name] har føjet noget til vedkommendes historie", because I can assure you [name] did not do that. I am sure that "[name] har føjet noget til sin historie", but apparently Instagram couldn't be bothered to check whether a single line of machine translation that is a BIG part of the notifications they send to probably hundreds of thousands of users daily is actually correct Danish. They literally just need one person with a rudimentary understanding of Danish grammar to look at that for like 3 seconds, but clearly that's too much effort for them.

[vikinglanguage]

sorry about the complaining, i'm just sick of skills like mine (linguistic knowledge from, y'know, getting a university degree) being devalued because "machines can do that" because NO THEY FUCKING CAN'T. also you know who helped design those fucking machine? computer linguists.

[vikinglanguage]

It's honestly tragic how little critical thought is utilised when people use machine generated stuff these days.

I die a little bit every time Instagram hits me with "[name] har føjet noget til vedkommendes historie", because I can assure you [name] did not do that. I am sure that "[name] har føjet noget til sin historie", but apparently Instagram couldn't be bothered to check whether a single line of machine translation that is a BIG part of the notifications they send to probably hundreds of thousands of users daily is actually correct Danish. They literally just need one person with a rudimentary understanding of Danish grammar to look at that for like 3 seconds, but clearly that's too much effort for them.

[south-africa-official]

one inconsequential thing i hate is when dictionaries don't use IPA or even broad notation but make up their own fucking thing.

[south-africa-official]

great. these letters mean nothing. i have learned nothing. what are any of us doing here.

[ublock-origin]

Koko the gorilla did irreparable damage to the average hearing person's understanding of sign language

[40ouncesandamule]

I would love to learn more if you've got a rant locked and loaded

[ublock-origin]

Koko, as with most "signing" apes, was "taught" modified ASL (bc their hands are different and they physically cant make all the same signs we can) by hearing scientists who did not speak ASL. They would learn a few signs, and then teach them to the apes, who would associate signs to objects and rewards.

The most jarring thing was, the apes are completely unable to learn grammar, and would say things like "Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you" (actual quote by Nim Chimpsky), which their handlers would interpret as a sentence, when in reality the apes are simply mimicking signs in hopes of getting a reward. Those hearing handlers would see things like "Nim eat" and "eat Nim" and intepret those as equally meaning "Nim wants to eat".

More damning, the lack of understanding of ASL by the hearing scientists meant that most of what Koko and Nim Chimpsky "spoke" was purely the scientists just seeing what they wanted to see. A Deaf person was brought in to interact with Nim, and they were instructed to not give him any food until he signed "food". They spent hours with an increasingly distressed chimp who did not sign anything, but Nim's hearing handlers would see him move his hand close to his mouth and go "oh! there it is! he signed it!", and while they spent the whole day signing, they didnt see Nim signing back.

With Koko, her handler would claim Koko would sometimes mix up signs like "need/knee", "I/eye", "people/nipple" because they "sound alike/rhyme" but... they don't. Those words rhyme in spoken English. They don't rhyme at all in ASL. Koko wouldn't know those words rhymed in english because she DIDN'T speak english, she "spoke" modified ASL. Of course, as the scientists did not speak ASL either, they didn't realize it, and just assumed random movements Koko meant were signs, and tried to think what she "could have meant instead" by thinking of what words sounded like the ones equivalent to what she had just "signed", even though an ASL speaker would not make a mistake like that.

I'm not even going to get into the fact that almost all of what those apes signed was due to direct prompting from scientists, the fact that they did not use language when alone, or the fact that most of what they answered was complete gibberish (which resulted in videos like Koko's climate address (yes, really) having to be heavily edited and cut to make it seem like she was actually speaking anything that made sense).

One really nasty side effect of this was like. The amount of hearing people who decided to try learning ASL and other sign languages because of the vague possibility of being able to communicate with apes, instead of, you know, the ACTUAL possibility of communicating with and appreciating Deaf people. (one person even said that Koko inspired them to learn ASL so they could communicate with their deaf friend, like... why the fuck did your FRIEND not inspire you to learn ASL??? did you really have to wait for a fucking gorilla failing to learn sign language to think "hmm, maybe talking to my friend would be nice!"??????)

The talking ape experiments helped cement in hearing people's consciousness the idea that ASL, and sign languages in general, are just poorly transcribed forms of spoken English that can be easily learned even by a chimp, instead of complex, independent languages with their own histories, cultures and internal variation.