Nu Gaaer Solen Ned!
November 8, 2010
THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:
I thought that your readers might like to see a bit of the beginning of “The Bell” in Hans Christian Andersen’s Danish. The Scandinavian languages are the Germanic languages closest to English; they are quite easy for English speakers to learn. I studied Andersen thirty years ago and more in Danish with Niels Ingwersen, an affable Dane, and a translator of Andersen, who spent a year at UCLA as a visiting professor. In those days, Scandinavian was an independent “section” of the Department of Germanic Languages, but it has since almost disappeared. This is true throughout American higher education, where, with the exception of Spanish, language studies nowadays recruit too few students to justify their departmental existence.
I have provided a ”key,” which comes after the two versions of the text.
IN DANISH: Om Aftenen i de snevre Gader i den store By, naar Solen gik ned og Skyerne skinnede som Guld oppe mellem Skorstenene, hørte tidt snart den Ene snart den Anden en underlig Lyd, ligesom Klangen af en Kirkeklokke, men det var kun et Øieblik den hørtes, for der var saadan en Rumlen med Vogne og saadan en Raaben og det forstyrrer. »Nu ringer Aftenklokken!« sagde man, »nu gaaer Solen ned!«
IN ENGLISH: In the narrow streets of a large town people often heard in the evening, when the sun was setting, and his last rays gave a golden tint to the chimney-pots, a strange noise which resembled the sound of a church bell; it only lasted an instant, for it was lost in the continual roar of traffic and hum of voices which rose from the town. “The evening bell is ringing,” people used to say; “the sun is setting!”
Om Aftenen = ”Of an evening” or ”evenings”
De snevre Gader = “the narrow streets” [snevre is related to the English word narrow]
Den store By = “the big town” [by, which is the final element of numerous English place-names, comes from the Old Norse word for a farm]
Solen = “the sun” [cognate with the Latin Solus]
Gik = past tense of the verb at gaa, “to go”
Skyerne = a definite plural, “the clouds” [the English word sky comes from this Dano-Norwegian word for billowy objects in the sky; Shelley uses the adjective “skyey” in a number of his poems]
Skinnede = past simple of the verb at skinne, “to shine”
Skorstenene = “chimney pots” [literally, “shoe stones,” from sko, (shoe) and sten (“stone”)]
Underlig = “wonderful” [cognate with the English term and with the German wunderbar]
Lyd = “sound” [cognate with the English loud]
Klang = “sound” [it appears with the attached article -en, as Klangen, THE sound]
Kirkeklokken = “church bell” [from Kirke, “church” (derived from the Greek Kyriakon) and Klokke, “bell”; in English, the Dano-Norwegian word for a bell became the word for a timepiece, clock]
Øieblick = “instant” or “moment” [literally, the blink (blik) of an eye (øie); related to the German Augenblick]
Rumlen = “the rumbling” [cognate with the English term]
Vogne = “wagons” [the Saxon word for a wagon was wain, as in a hay-wain, obviously cognate; but the Dano-Norwegian word somehow supervened]
