Greetings from Denmark

Introduce Yourself
#1

Hi everybody!

My name is Allan. I’m 43 years old and live with my wife and kids in Odense, Denmark.

My native language is Danish and I’m fluent in English. Those are my main languages.

I’m also fluent in Moroccan Arabic (my wife’s Moroccan) and upper-intermediate in Modern Standard Arabic. I understand a lot of other Arabic dialects fairly well. After having visited Cairo earlier this year I’m thinking of learning Egyptian Arabic.

I can understand German and French (having learned both for 5 years in school), but I’m rusty when it comes to speaking and writing them. They might become a future project… I also understand Swedish and Norwegian (bokmål).

Currently I’m focused on learning Spanish. I’m probably upper-intermediate when it comes to reading and understanding spoken Spanish, but I need to work on speaking. Based on Donovan’s thorough review of Rocket Spanish I’ve recently signed up for that.

Apart from languages I’m also interested in religion, philosophy, and history. I’m a graphic/web designer.

#2

Hey Allan, how are you going mate? I’m also working on the Spanish at the moment and also really trying to nail my pronunciation. Have acquired a bunch of works by Garcia Marquez, Julio Cortazar, Vargas Llosa, etc and am reading them out loud to myself. Finding that quite useful to keep up the momentum as it can be hard to organise to speak it daily when you are not living in a Spanish speaking country.

As an aside, what are some of the best books of philosophy you enjoy? Have dipped my toes into the water with some of the Greeks but have yet to start on any real ‘modern’ philosophy.

#3

[quote=“Kyrin, post:2, topic:279, full:true”]
Hey Allan, how are you going mate? I’m also working on the Spanish at the moment and also really trying to nail my pronunciation. Have acquired a bunch of works by Garcia Marquez, Julio Cortazar, Vargas Llosa, etc and am reading them out loud to myself. Finding that quite useful to keep up the momentum as it can be hard to organise to speak it daily when you are not living in a Spanish speaking country…[/quote]

Hey Kyrin, I’m great, thanks! What about you?
Yeah, I also reading… mostly news and articles - I use LingQ for that. I’ve also enrolled in Rocket Spanish after reading Donovan’s review and I’m really liking the course so far. I think their course is really good for practicing pronunciation and for “chunking”. :smile:

For listening practice I also use YouTube and podcasts. The Easy Spanish channel is pretty good and less boring than many other ones and it’s basically just street interviews on everyday topics with Spanish and English subs.

I’m currently reading “Meditations” by emperor Marcus Aurelius and it’s definitely worth a read! :smiley:

1 Like
#4

I’m great as well thanks mate. Nice, sounds like you’ve got a great plan for attacking the Spanish, hope it all goes well for you. I personally found the podcast ‘Podcasts En Español’ quite helpful. Only spoken in Spanish and covers everything from grammar to idioms to general chitchat. Crisp pronunciation and the two speakers are from Mexico and Spain so you get a good mix of the main accents. They also split up their audios into beginner, intermediate and advanced so it covers whatever level you are at quite nicely.

Have you got any suggestions for YouTube channels or podcasts that are useful for listening to German? I am looking for something conversationally based (i.e., a bit of give and take between two speakers) that isn’t too fast and that is only in the German language. Basically a version of what I described above (or close to that) would be awesome.

#5

Thanks! I’ll check out that Spanish podcast. :slight_smile:
The only German YouTube channel I know that might fit the description is “Easy German” which follows the same template as “Easy Spanish” that I mentioned above. :slight_smile:

#6

Cheers mate, will have a looksie!