February 2, 2019

My letter of Intent has come back approved. Now I've started doing some danish lessons on
Duolingo. I've used Duolingo before and found that it is enjoyable but a little lacking in
features. What I can't get on Duolingo I'll supplement with research about Danish from other
sites. The "basics I" category is what I would expect. It goes over how to throw together
simple sentences like "en mand spiser et æble" (a man eats an apple). The plan is to do a
little Danish every day and then teach my grandma what I've learned once I'm a little more
comfortable with the language. Today I spent about 15 minutes doing lessons. To make the
task seem less insurmountable I have to tell myself that I'm not required to learn the whole
language but rather consistently expose myself to Danish and do my best to learn. My
project isn't about becoming fluent but about learning. No matter how much I learn though I
don't know if I'll ever be able to pronounce the Danish words correctly, its near impossible to
even recognize the words when they're spoken rather than written out.

February 20, 2019

Now that I have done some more Duolingo I've found that Danish is very similar to English.
The structure isn't very different so i don't have to worry so much about putting words in the
right order. One weird thing that Danish does is that to make a word definitive (how the word
"the" works in english) one adds the suffix "-en" or "-et" to the noun. For example "mand"
means "man", but "manden" translates to "the man". Taking Danish sentences and
translating them to English isn't super difficult. I find composing Danish sentences much
harder to do. When I see a Danish word I can fairly easily recognize it, but when writing in
Danish it can sometimes be difficult to recall the word and more often the spelling. So far the
vocabulary is very manageable and i rarely ever find myself forgetting words. I made my
commitment poster about 2 weeks ago and that kind of signaled to me that the project has
really begun. Learning Danish isn't particularly difficult so far, but I'm a little worried the
language might throw some curveballs at me later on and make progress really difficult.

February 27, 2019

February is just about over and there is still a lot of Danish to learn. I don't feel like I'm
making a lot of progress, but at the same time I also feel like taking it slow is probably
better. If I try and cram a lot of Danish into a single day I probably won't retain as much, and
I want to make sure that I remember the things I learn. I'm still having no problems with
remembering vocab. Right now I need to work on a way to improve my recall of words when
they aren't in front of me and constructing sentences and phrases in my head. One thing
that found helpful on Duolingo is that when using the web version instead of the app there is
a button that pulls up a lesson overview. the overviews are short and take maybe five
minutes to read. Usually when I unlock a new lesson I read the overview then do an exercise
or two. I've started writing in a notebook some of the vocab words for lessons and grammar
things that the lesson overviews say. As I learn more Danish I'm going to have to incorporate
days where I do review exercises to make sure I don't forget anything instead of just moving
on to the next lesson every time.

March 10, 2019

I've been doing less Duolingo and instead have tried using to Danish media. I watch Danish
youtube videos and listen to Danish music to try and see what I can understand. So far I
don't think this immersion method is as effective for me and I should go back to doing
Duolingo lessons. It has helped with pronunciation a little bit though. Hearing a real person
say the words is far better than the disembodied robot voice on Duolingo. The music isn't
very helpful because words are sometimes dragged out to match the music and the words
can sometimes be difficult to hear. I think that Danish media could be helpful to learning the
language once I have a firmer grasp but right now it just seems like they're speaking so fast
that everything is flying over my head and I have to wait for things I recognize and then
replay those parts until I'm sure of what they said. I think part of the problem is that I've only
seen danish in the present tense and have no familiarity with the past or future tenses.
Maybe I'll try again once I learn those. At the very least I'm slightly more comfortable with
the pronunciation.

March 15, 2019

The notebook I've been using to write down vocab and grammar notes is not a great system.
I find myself having to go make and add things to sections I thought I was done with. The
pages run out of space and my handwriting can be pretty bad. I've instead decided to
digitize my notebook and make a google sheet with my vocab and notes. I plan on cutting
out the unnecessary notes and keeping the more straightforward rules and notes for the
sake of organization and readability. I've color coded the sections so that the lists remain
distinct and so the reader won't get lost as easily. The study guide is pretty small right now
and not very impressive. As far as Duolingo goes I continue to fail the pronunciation
questions in Duolingo where I have to speak Danish into the microphone, but at least I've
improved on the questions where I have to dictate sentences spoken to me. I should be
visiting my grandma soon. She thinks the idea of learning some Danish with me sounds like
fun. I don't expect her to retain much of it but I think the mental workout will be good for
her.

March 23, 2019

I've started the community service aspect of my project. My mother does childcare in the
home during the day so I interact with the she watches baby a lot. Because she isn't
speaking yet, but she babbles. I think reading to her and talking to her as much as I can to
help her learn is a good tie-in to my project seeing as that it is about language acquisition.
My mom also tries to use some basic sign language with the baby so I'm going to too. Not
full sentences but simple words like "yes", "no", "more", "drink', etc. I see the baby every
morning on weekdays and sometimes when I get home after school. I plan on making an
extra effort to spend time with her on Tuesdays and Thursdays about fifteen to twenty-five
minutes interacting with her and record that as my community service. My progress in
Duolingo has slowed down because I'm starting to do review to make sure the older lessons
are fresh in my mind.

March 27, 2019

I saw my grandmother and did my first lesson with her. It didn't go very well. In normal
English conversation she's fine, just a little spacey. But it was very difficult to try and teach
her new things. I started by going over that the Danes have a different alphabet with more
letters (Æ,Ø,Å) then went on to basic phrases like "jeg er en kvinde" (I am a woman). Every
time she saw a word for the second, third, or fourth time it was exactly the same as the first
time she saw it. From my research I found that an important part of brain health is regularly
doing complex problem solving. And I can say for certain that trying to derive meaning from
a sentence in another language definitely feels like work. So even if she isn't retaining much
at least she is doing problem solving. Even though she won't much I plan to keep doing short
lessons with her. She's happy to help me with my project and I'm glad that I get to do
something with her too.

March 30, 2019

While I was with my grandma I bought a children's book from a Danish book store in town.
It's title is "Min Hund Grog" or in English "My Dog Grog" by Robert Storm Petersen. I tried to
read some of it but there are a significant number of words I don't know. I wanted to buy a
book that was aimed at very young children just learning to speak Danish, but they didn't
have any. This book is more aimed at elementary school aged Danish children. I would like to
be able to read it by the time I'm finished with my senior project but I'm not sure if that's
possible. I have less than two months left to finish senior project and there's a lot of vocab I
would need to learn in that time to read it. I still haven't even seen the past tense on
Duolingo. I guess I should research that on my own If I want to learn it. In fact I haven't even
learned numbers yet. This is all a very slow process. I'm tempted to try and learn as much as
I can as fast as I can as the end of the project comes closer every day. But I know cramming
will only mean I don't remember much and will have to relearn it anyway.

April 3, 2019
I'm improving at the listening questions on Duolingo. I now consistently get them right.
Although regular speech in danish is still too fast for me to really understand. I don't have
the vocab or familiarity with the language to keep up. Genitives are fairly straightforward,
just add the suffix "-s". I feel like I should be further along in Danish but Duolingo locks
further lessons until you complete everything before them. The Animals and Food sections
were pretty long and had a ton of vocab so that really slowed me down. But as long as I keep
exposing myself to the language that means I'm on track for my project. Again forming
sentences on my own remains a challenge, but i'm content for now with successfully being
able to read Danish. My study guide is slowly growing and filling up more space. I may have
to come up with a better way to organize it.

April 7, 2019
I'm getting better at my Danish pronunciation. I'm getting the speaking question correct
more often than not now. I am by no means a great speaker of Danish now, but I guess I'm
at least somewhat intelligible now. I've done some research on counting in Danish. It's not
very hard to form compound numbers like 46. The problem is remembering the numbers.
They aren't that different from the English numbers but they still need to be memorized. I
need to remember to learn the past tense sometime soon. I could probably get significantly
further in Min Hund Grog even if I don't know all the verbs and nouns if I understand how the
past tense is organized. Maybe I should try watching whatever the Danish equivalent of
sesame street is.

April 10, 2019

I tried watching some Danish children's programming on youtube. I know that educational
programming for small children could be really helpful to learning foreign languages.
Unfortunately all the videos that I found were insufferable low budget flash animations that I
don't think anyone over the age of 7 could possibly sit through. If I could find something that
was a little more tolerable I would use it, but unfortunately there seems to be nothing for
now. Danish youtubers talk really fast and obviously have a much more extensive danish
vocabulary than I do, so it doesn't do very much for me in terms of listening comprehension.
If I could find some sort of danish media that had was decently well produced and aimed at a
young audience then I would definitely try to use it to study, but the Danish market is pretty
niche considering that most danes (about 86%) also speak English as a second language.

April 15, 2019

I visited my grandma again. Again she didn't retain much. really we just went over
everything we talked about the first time. It's sad to see her having a difficult time
understanding it. I try to be very patient and go at her speed of learning but she just isn't
learning. It's good for her to break routine and do something that is challenging though. I
keep the lessons at only about 15 minutes each because she starts to get frustrated after a
while. After one of the lessons I sat down and read a few pages of Min Hund Grog out loud to
her. Even though neither of us could really understand it it's still exposure to Danish, which
is good. I'll probably visit my grandma one more time before the end of the year for a few
more lessons. Even though she won't retain it is nice to spend time with her and see her
happy to help me with my project.

April 19, 2019

I don't feel like I'm making a lot of progress with Danish as of now. All that I'm really doing is
adding a few nouns and the occasional verb to my vocabulary. I need to learn something
that changes the routine kinds of sentences that I've been working with for so long. of
course vocab is the backbone of learning a language. It doesn't matter if you know all the
grammar, rules, and structure of a language if you don't know what things are. Even so, I
need to get some new material otherwise my progress will remain stagnant. Hopefully
something a little more interesting will come up sometime soon.

April 23, 2019

I've finished colors on Duolingo. These are the first adjective that I've added to my Danish
vocabulary. Obviously adjectives are extremely important to any language. Being able to
describe things is vital. I would like to learn more basic adjectives like "hot, cold, big, small,
fast slow, young, old," and the other necessary descriptions. I assume other adjectives work
the same way as colors do. If that’s the case then it's the same as english, just put the
adjective in front of the noun that’s being described. The actual adjective section, where I
assume I will learn some of the adjectives I’ve listed earlier, is still locked behind a number
of lessons so it will take some time to get to. I'd rather learn them sooner than later, but I
suppose the people who made the program put the lessons in the order they're in for a
reason. I just hope things get a little more shaken up soon.

April 27, 2019

The questions portion of Danish is really giving me a rough time. there are so many words to
remember. Hvem, hvad, hvordan, hvor, hvorfor, and hvornår are the who, what, where,
when, why, and how of Danish. It's pretty difficult to keep track of. I'm going to reviewing
this section extensively to try and remember it. It may be difficult to remember but they are
really important words and open up many new ways to say things and are vital in
understanding a lot of things. Being able to communicate with questions really adds a new
dimension to Danish
May 2, 2019
Now that I've learned questions I feel much less like I'm not progressing with Danish.
Questions are a vital component of any language and add another layer of depth to what I
know. It creates new sentence structures other than [the noun verbs the other noun]. It's not
all that different, but it's different enough to have some impact. The added challenge of
remembering words like "hvem" is a refreshing change of pace. I'm guessing that once I
master questions I will start to feel like I'm stagnating again then get pulled out of it the next
time a lesson that teaches something totally different than basic nouns comes up again.

May 7, 2019
Today I had a lot of free time and I blew through two lesson sections on Duolingo. This is
definitely much faster than I've been taking it so far. But right now I really want to add more
to my study guide so that I can make it just a little bit bigger and a little bit more impressive
before the project ends. I might keep it up with the faster rate for a little bit as long as the
subjects are easy enough. I want to get more stuff done but I don’t want to do too much too
fast and not retain it.

May 10, 2019

I’ve continued studying at the faster pace I tried earlier. I finished the Duolingo lessons for
time and family. The time section had a significant amount of vocab. It ranged from the days
of the week, to the months, and even the times of day. So far those are pretty easy to
remember. Most of the months match up with the english equivalent so they’re really easy
to recognize, less so to remember how they’re spelled. The family section wasn’t very
difficult either. Most of the words seemed pretty fitting to their meaning.

May 13, 2019

for the first time it's starting to get a little difficult to remember certain danish words.
sometimes they pop up on my screen and I just can't recall what they are. I guess that
means I need to do more review. It's mostly the question words that throw me off, and
occasionally colors. I'm still doing well with animals, food, verbs, and pretty much everything
else I've learned. I think for the remainder of the project I will be doing review so that I can
cement everything in my mind before the final presentation rather than try to add new stuff.
It's probably better that I be really familiar with all the other stuff I know over being pretty
familiar with it but having a few extra words that I may or may not use in my vocabulary if I
need to demonstrate some Danish.

May 19, 2019

It's almost the end of the year and I don't feel like I've learned enough Danish. I think I
should have tried to up the pace earlier than I did. Then again there are still words that I
need to review because I still don't have the hang of them yet, specifically questions. Either
way I've been doing what I said I would do, learn the basics of Danish and teach my
grandma as best as I can. I think I'm going to continue to learn Danish after senior project is
over. The thought of fluently reading in another language is really cool to me. Being able to
access stories and all sorts of cultural stuff unique to Denmark sounds fun. Also, being able
to say that I'm fluent in Danish would be kind of a good icebreaker or weird fact that I could
mention to people in the future.