XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien, alt.fan.tolkien
From: the_stan_brown@fastmail.fm
Wed, 08 Jul 2009 22:53:42 +0200 from Troels Forchhammer
:
> In message
> Stan Brown spoke these staves:
> > (*) I'm not sure it's entirely accurate to say that Danes are not
> > native English speakers. :-) As far as I can see, virtually every
> > Scandinavian born after about World War II speaks English as well
> > as most Americans.
>
> You should at least not judge the average capability by what you see
> here -- the level exhibited by the Scandinavians here (and of nearly
> every other Scandinavian I've come across on usenet) is quite a bit
> above average (even if some of us Tolkien fans probably have a
> slightly outdated vocabulary -- on the other hand it's good to know
> of oast, barner and byre ;-)
Nope, not just judging by Usenet. One of the high points of my life
was a month in Scandinavia and Finland in 1994. I didn;t spend much
time in the countryside, but in the cities everyone's English was
excellent.
The only time I ever had to use my (rudimentary) Danish was on a
train trip from Kobenhavn to Vejle. I was sitting across from a
grandmother who was traveling to Thisted, and she had even less
English than I had Danish. My accent was so vile that we ended up
supplementing our conversation with pencil and paper.
--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com
Tolkien FAQs: http://Tolkien.slimy.com (Steuard Jensen's site)
Tolkien letters FAQ:
http://mysite.verizon.net/aznirb/mtr/lettersfaq.html
FAQ of the Rings: http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/ringfaq.htm
Encyclopedia of Arda: http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/default.htm
more FAQs: http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/faqget.htm
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
|
