A Few Curiosities and Comicalities

November is the rainiest and cloudiest month in Denmark.  According to Kirsten, the clouds come from the ocean and help keep the frost from coming really early, although this particular season, Denmark experienced one of the warmest Novembers in over 30 years, with a few hours of sunshine on occasional days and temperatures in the upper 40's.  I'm guessing December usually has fairly similar weather, but this year, December made sure to make an entrance.  The sky was CLEAR, the air was BITING, and man did I wish I had my camera as the setting sun lit up the buildings on my way to class at 3 this afternoon.

So I thought I'd celebrate December's arrival with small list of linguistic curiosities that I've learned recently:

• The Danish word for reindeer is "rensdyr."  Pretty similar, right? But instead of literally translating to "reins" and "deer," this actually means "cleaning animal."
• Instead of saying something is "cool," you can say "Det er fedt."  Yes, folks--that is fat, isn't it?  Thankfully, it comes without the connotation of "phat."
• The titles of kids movie translate so awesomely into Danish.  I mean, yeah, it's simply fun to say "Nat på Museet To!" in your head, but I personnally like Ice Age: Dinosaurerne Kommer.  The literal translation is "THE DINOSAURS COME!"  (I capitalized that just for effect.)
• I thought the Latin word for "beautiful" (pulcher) was ugly until I learned the Danish word:  "smuk."
• I ride the purple commuter rail line, but three months after looking at the names of the stops every day, I realized that four of the towns (including mine) end in the word for "red."

Lastly (and this one is both too long for a bullet and not-language related), my host-family and I had the strangest revelation yesterday evening when Rene turned on the tv so that he could check if his parent's flight back from their vacation was on time (he had to pick them up).
Me:  *jaw drop*  "You can check flights ON THE TV?!?"
Kirsten:  *palms hitting the table* "You DON'T HAVE Text-TV!!?! We're actually ahead of the US in something!!"
Well, that and, you know, public health care.
But in all seriousness, all of us were pretty surprised.  Apparently Text-TV is something they've had for at least 25 years, and you hit in a code so that you can see traffic, flights, the weather, etc.  I explained to them that the most similar thing we have is cable access television, but even then, it's mostly pictures of animals at the shelter.  Maybe there is Text-TV somewhere in the US, but not from my cable provider, certainly.