Languages...

Well, I am a bit of a language nut. It used to come so naturally to me before I went to war and was blasted by an explosion that gave me a minor to moderate TBI. Now I have trouble learning them, but it does not stop me from loving to learn language or at least trying to learn a language. I know Mongolian from living in Mongolia for a couple years teaching English as a Second Language. While there I picked up just enough Russian to get me into trouble. The Army sent me to language school and I learned Korean. I used it a lot, especially when I went to Korea. While I was in high school I learned Japanese. My family lived in Japan  for 3 1/2 years. I was getting pretty good, but sadly I have forgotten my Japanese. Languages are unfortunately a perishable skill. I have always been interested in the Germanic and Slavic languages though. I tried to get a friend of mine in Japan to help me learn German, but that didn't really work. Being in military families at the time, we were moved and I lost contact with him.

Well, after having some medically directed exercises with a therapist for my TBI, the doctor suggested that I learn something new to help my memory. I was having a bit of a time trying to figure out what to learn. Then it came to me. At that time, suddenly, my grandfather had a stroke and was hospitalized. Of course it affected his language. We all thought he started speaking Danish because he grew up in a Danish community with Danish family members. I don't really know if he was speaking Danish for sure at the time, but it made me think about where I came from before I was blessed to be an American. It made me interested in my family tree and their history, etc. I then decided that I was going to learn the language of my ancestors. So I got online, ordered some books and audio. Searched all over the Internet for resources, etc. Then I started the routine I use to learn language. Danish! Yes Danish. I absolutely love it!

It wasn't long before my family found out I was trying to learn Danish, through normal conversation, me showing my materials, and of course family gossip.I had decided to help my children learn with me, if they were interested. To this day, they are pretty excited about it. I took my old laptop from Iraq and converted it to an Ubuntu Linux box and got Wine set up on it and turned it into a language laptop. They really love it. Plus that is just another computer that my technologically advanced family can use. I get a few sour looks over it once in a while from my brother who speaks Russian and my sister teases me about it, but I am determined to learn Danish and help my kids learn another language themselves.

Now, I understand most written Danish and am currently listening to Danish Radio on the Internet. I also have made a few Dane friends that are helping me out with pronunciation and word order and such. It is a great past time, even though the TBI makes it very difficult to make much progress everyday. Hopefully one day I will be able to go to Denmark and visit my friends and visit my family's area and see other neat things about Denmark. Til that day, I am my kids study away. I would suggest anyone do the same with a language for their kids.

And with that, I end my ramblings. Hope everyone is have a good one!

Niels

The beginning...

Everyone and everything has to start somewhere and sometime... Well here I am starting a blog. I am wondering how successful it will be. I am somewhat nervous about putting things out there for the whole world to see. I suspect there won't be too many people if any that will follow it.

Today my family went out to take some picture of the whole family. Melanie (my wife) had a friend come and take the pictures for us. We puttered around looking for the best site to take the pictures while my kids ran around the waterfall throwing rocks into the water. We finally got the place set up and gathered the herd up and got the pictures taken. I have not seen them yet but I am sure that I won't like them because I absolutely abhor seeing images of myself. I really don't know why that is; it certainly causes problems when I go to shave and manage my hair.

You may be wondering why I have Danish written on my blog... Let me make something very clear before I explain... I am a proud American citizen first of all. Got that? Good. Now, my ancestors came from Denmark around the 1840's. I am proud of my heritage and seek to understand it. As I study Danish people I understand a lot more about my family. ...certain ways of thinking, certain customs, types of personalities, etc. I also study the Danish language. I love it. It feels so natural to me, and since my ancestry is Danish, it just seems right to me to include Danish in my blog.

Well, that is all I have for now. As I start to get the hang of blogging you will be able to read more. If you are actually looking at my blog, thank you. I hope you have a wonderful day/night.