Customer Reviews

Danish, Compact: Learn to Speak and Understand Danish with Pimsleur Language Programs (Simon & Schuster's Pimsleur)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I bought this CD set because I am going to Denmark soon, and I wanted to be able to at least ask where the bathroom was.... :)

My mom (who is a Danish national) said that my pronunciation is great - I guess that's because I have listened to each lesson at least twice... so far anyway... It helps to have her, so I can see how her mouth is formed during words, because SOME of the Danish words I couldn't quite make out - that's why I only gave it 4 stars... well, that and the fact that people were looking at me crazy when I was sitting at traffic lights, repeating phrases... ;)

This was my first Pimsleur course. It is remarkable how well it teaches you a spoken language - all of which you can do in your car. Because they are constantly asking you how to put together words and phrases that you know, they reinforce what you have learned and force you to invent new combinations. Very effective. Unfortunately there isn't a longer version of this available. It is just 10 lessons.

The Pimsleur Danish course is an extremely useful way to learn Danish. I have been going through the lessons every day and it's amazing how quickly you can pick up the language. As reported here on other reviews there are some limits, it would be nice for the book to have the lessons written out as well so you can read what you are saying. This would help with the the differences in little things like Jeg Ved and Jeg Vil.

Also the course is only 10 units long and as such is enough to give you excellent practice in the first steps of learning but only a limited vocabulary and not many useful first phrases. It would be great if Pimsleur would extend this course into the full Phase 1 plus Phase 2-3&4 like other languages.

I highly recommend getting this course as an introduction to the Danish language. You will get a lot more benefit out of it if used in conjunction with a Danish dictionary. I contacted them about extending the course and they said it will happen but in time. If it was more popular then it would happen sooner. So if you want a longer course then go the the Pimsleur home page and send them a request. They will listen if enough people want it.

All up I give it 4 stars because it is limited in its scope and could use a better learning booklet.

This program works but the only downside is that i am a visual learner and need to see the words i'm learning so i asked my danish fiance to help me out with that part. this cd is stricly audio which was disapointing but i gave this program a shot and i'm learning the language. thats all i could ask for.

I have used the Pimsleur method for learning Spanish, and it was a good start, along with Learn Spanish in Your Car (CD plus booklet) and some grammar. But this Danish course is extremelyl frustrating. First, a huge amount of time is wasted with the annoying "Ask; try to say; now try to say; try to say the answer" etc. etc. praompts. Also, all of these English prompts distract from the Danish. In teh Spanish Pimsleur tapes the prompt "listen and repeat" is in Spanish. In Danish, nohting useful is in Danish, it is all in Engliah. To the extent that prompts are necessary (and generally they are totally unnec) they interject English into your head when you are trying to learn Danish. Worse, however, is the pedagogical approach. I don't actually see any approach in terms of content. The lessons jump around from one topic to the next and make absolutely no use of the idea of learning patterns. Anew word is introduced, and instead of practicing it you are prompted " NOw, aske where Michael Brygge Street is." Really ? Why? Aren't we learning the use of "also"? The scriptwriters seem to have no ability to focus on one learning task and present it in such a way that you learn it. Another problem is that the pronunciation issues are not clearly dealt with---yet pronunication is probably the biggest challenge for anyone learning Danish. Pronunciations differ for the same word, sometimes from one example to the very next (e.g., "gade" in "reading" exercise for unit 5). And what's with the way these are "reading" exercises are designed? We don't need a prompt: "now try to read the next word." We need to hear the next word, and other words with similar pronunciation patterns. And why must we hear the names of two streets in C'hagen repeatedly? Two streets with complicated names? Why not teach the pattern for "Where is ...?" with a number of useful completions, such as "the post office?" "the bank?" the bus?" etc. Very irritating, pedagogically weak, and a big waste of time, aside from the few phrases that you might be able to take away from this. Such as "No thank you."

Unless you are incredibly terrible with languages do not waste your money on this. It will not teach you anything very useful. You end up learning about 20 very basic phrases that are not so flexible in various situations. I recommend borrowing it from the library as a first step, to get used to danish pronunciation and purchase Bente Elsworth's Teach Yourself Danish.

Normally I swear by the Pimsleur tapes, but in this case 10 lessons is not sufficient compared to other Pimsleur languages that have 16 lessons. What also frustrated me is that the speakers accents are very different between the male and female - and in many cases their pronunciations are very different than hearing the same words on Google Translate. I'll update my rating after my trip to Denmark.

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this CD set and felt the method of instruction was quite effective. Listening to a 30-minute lesson per day on the way to work kept us engaged and interested without too much brain fatigue! But I have several major criticisms. First, I would have liked more practical words and phrases, such as "Where is the toilet?" "How much does this cost?" or "Hi, my name is ___, pleased to meet you." They would have been more useful than learning to say, "I would like to eat at the restaurant at the Hotel D'Angleterre," ($$$$), or "I would like to eat at your house," a phrase whose usefulness seems particularly limited. I would also have liked to know from the CD that there is no Danish word for please, rather than having to infer it. My second and more important criticism is that at least in the area around Copenhagen where I was visiting family, the pronunciations used here did not sound correct at all and were at times incomprehensible to native speakers. I don't think it was just me: my cousins complimented me on my ear for languages, and I learned quite a bit from them, but they were convinced by what I had learned that I was probably listening to native speakers of Swedish rather than Danish. (While I can't speak from direct experience, the languages in Scandinavia appear to be particularly closely related, and Danish speakers can readily communicate with Swedes and Norwegians, for instance.) There were two distinctly different accents on the CD, but the pronunciations were just not recognizably Danish to my cousins, at least. Finally, there were some words that were pronounced the same on the CD, but in fact are different words and pronunciations. For example, "jeg ved" (I know) and "jeg vil" (I want) sounded exactly the same to me on the CD, but in Denmark sounded like different words with subtly different pronunciations. This last may be a limitation of listening to CDs, versus learning the language in person, or may be related to the Danish/Swedish problem I mentioned. In short, while I enjoyed the method of instruction and the challenge of a new language, I found the actual usefulness limited because of the types of phrases taught and difficulties with the accents of the speakers.