Goals are there to be reached!

When I moved to Denmark in 2006 I had decided that I was really going to learn to speak Danish and that no one was going to be able to hear that I wasn’t Danish. It took me about two months before I really understood Danish and after that it all just came very natural to me. So after maybe half a year I was speaking Danish without any problems and it really did sound like a real Dane. I always took pride in that, I had set out to do something and I had succeeded!

This year, as you all know, I moved to Iceland, and so my new goal is to learn to speak Icelandic and it will sound like I was born here! So fare I’m not doing great. I can understand a lot more Icelandic that I think I can, at least that’s what Doddi says 😉 I don’t think it will be a problem for me to learn to understand Icelandic. It’s not that different from the other Nordic languages and I can speak and/or understand 3 of them, so it shouldn’t be a problem. What I’m more worried about is the talking. Icelanders talk completely different from what I’m used to. Still this is just something I need to get use to and just learn!

Another problem with speaking Icelandic is the letters. Even if they are a Nordic country they still don’t have the same alphabet as the rest of us. They have some very different letters which can be pretty hard to pronounce. And of course I can never remember how to pronounce them… But one of the letters I’m having some problems with is not one of the “Icelandic” letters, it R. A letter which we all have in our alphabet and still it’s so hard for me to say it in the Icelandic way. They somehow roll it, and that is not how we say R in the south of Sweden. This this might be a challenge.

Even if I find it all difficult I’m still not giving up! I will learn Icelandic and I will learn it soon! I hate not being able to talk to people here. I don’t want to be seen as a tourist or an outsider, I hate that. I live here now and so people shouldn’t treat me like I’m just here for a holiday.

At the moment Doddi and I manly speak Swedish to each other. It still does happen that we do switch over to English at times, but not as much as we use to. Of course it’s okay that we speak Swedish, nothing wrong with that. But I do wish I could speak Swedish to him and he would answer me in Icelandic and I would understand him. As it is now I understand somewhere around 40-80% of what he’s saying, so it doesn’t really work yet. But like I said before, I’m not giving up! I will reach my goal once again! 😉