Max's Article

Max was recently featured in an article about children learning to speak Danish. One of Max's teachers applied for a grant to receive training in a new system that involves a "language box", a box of materials, games, etc. that his teacher uses to teach Max the Danish language. One of the milestones they worked towards was Max learning enough Danish to appear in a play with other children. Max played the role of a soldier (soldaten) and, according to his teachers, did an excellent job! (Be sure to look at page 3 of the article to see a picture of Max dressed as the soldier standing next to a toy tank.)

The article is written in Danish of course and my goal is to one day translate it into English. I don't have the time right now, though, as I'm hip deep in managing the creation of the ICSE 2006 conference proceedings as well as writing a paper to submit to the ACM Hypertext 2006 conference. Perhaps I'll be able to convince one of my Danish colleagues to translate the article for me (in their copious spare time).

With the help of Ordbogen.com (literally "WordBook.com"), here are (poor) translations of a few key phrases in the article.

• Title: Trude and the soldier find their way to language.



• Next to Max's picture on page 3: "The soldier speaks Danish. The hunt in the living forest of Bodøgården is at an end. The little, courageous soldier has made a kill." (I think that's the translation. It sounds a little harsh!) "So the soldier says: Forsvind for altid, " instructs Trude. (I can't figure that last phrase out, word for word it translates "Get out of here for always" but that doesn't make sense.) Anyway, it appears that Trude is telling Max to say something. The next sentence says something like "But this time Max ignores the order and repeats the reply." The next sentence says "He speaks English, Trude" tells another boy of his American friend."
  
  So, I think what this paragraph is saying is that Max makes a mistake and doesn't do what Trude tells him to do. His mistake is forgiven because "Max speaks English" and hence doesn't understand her command! :-)



• Start of the third paragraph from the end of the article: "It was fantastic to see how Max and Salma performed in the play."



• Second to last paragraph: "For five year old Max, who came to Denmark in September with his American researcher parents learning the language was quite hard". The last phrase is my interpretation of what the sentence means, literally translated "er det gået rigtigt stærkt" means "is that the going right strongly" which, of course, doesn't make any sense. Ah, idioms! What fun!

Okay, I give up. I'm DEFINITELY going to have to convince a Dane to translate this for me! :-)

Unlike his father, Max's ability to speak Danish is amazing. We recently had a friend of his, Axel, from school over to play with Max and have dinner with us. Axel, of course, does not speak English, so it was up to Max to translate for Leysia and I. He did an excellent job and Leysia was so fascinated by the way Max could speak Danish with Axel that she sat there and videotaped them speaking to each other! I'll post one of those videos to this blog soon.

Ken