Discovering the Language of Creativity.

What the Danes, Viggo Venn, and learning language add to expanding creativity.

Photo by Rolf Blicher Godfrey on Unsplash

"Jeg elsker dig"…

That's what they told me to say.

To the cute shop attendant selling thick winter jackets at Magazine du Nord, a Danish department store in Copenhagen paa stroget.  

As a 15-year-old on exchange in Europe, I was unaccustomed to the language and gullible and naive, and I fell for it. 

Go ahead and stick that into a Danish / English translation ap and I guarantee you it doesn't say what I thought it did 😜

I thought I was asking, "How much does that cost? "… and instead, I found myself professing my undying love to a stranger.

It was a solid practical joke; the Danes are like that.

But I got there.. 12 months later, not only was I writing essays in Danish, cooking from Danish cookbooks, and readily conversing around the table, I was dreaming in Danish!!! My newfound vocal had worked its way into my subconscious. I believed myself to be a Dane on the inside.

Learning a language is a funny thing. 

I stumbled across an article recently entitled: Learning a second language, while thinking about this idea. It is fascinating. 

In it, it talks about the basics of learning a language and says this: - 

The Basics: 

First, let's talk about the basics. Research in this area (called "second language acquisition" in academia) suggests that there are three key elements to learning a new language.

• The first is comprehensible input, which is a fancy way of saying being exposed to (hearing or reading) something in the new language and learning to understand it.

• Comprehensible output is the second element, and unsurprisingly it means learning to produce (speak or write) something in the new language.

• The third element is review or feedback, which basically means identifying errors and making changes in response.

Fancy terms aside, these are actually pretty straightforward ideas.

These three elements are the building blocks of your language practice, and an effective study plan will maximize all three. The more you listen and read (input), the more you speak and write (output), and the more you go back over what you've done and learn from your errors (review & feedback), the more your language skills will grow.

That was me in Denmark. I listened and learned; I practiced and wrote and spoke and made friends, and each time I did, it stretched me and added to my repertoire.