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5 Things Which Surprised Me After I Moved to Denmark
It’s an amazing country to live in
I was only 18 years old when I moved from Lebanon to Denmark back in 2004 to study Mechatronics engineering. Now 17 years after, I would like to share with you some of the things which were surprising to me, and I didn’t know about beforehand.
1. Danish language is very difficult to learn
The danish language, according to most foreigners, is a challenging language to learn. One can ask the question whether it is the language which is difficult or it is because foreigners haven’t been trying hard enough to learn it? In my experience, it is a combination of both.
As I am originally from Lebanon, I am french educated and have always practiced both Arabic and the French language in school from 1st class until the end of high school. While the Arabic language has just three vowels, the danish language has at least 24 different vowel sounds. Spanish, for instance, has five vowel sounds, and german has 14 different vowel sounds. The fact is that for most foreigners or newcomers to Denmark, these vowels are close to indistinguishable. It is so indistinguishable that even linguists are not able to agree on precisely how many there are.
