a word

I try to keep up my Danish by reading news on the computer, and mostly I am doing well, that is till today when I stumbled over a word in a headline.

Now the Danes like to make long words of what in English would be two or three or more separate words.

Where I ran into trouble was the word  "skovejere" which I divided into "sko" ( shoes) and "vejere" ( people who weigh things) which made the word "people who weigh shoes".

That did not make any sense at all. So I Looked at the word again, and little, very little lights went off.

When I divided the word differently I came up with "skov" ( forest ) "ejere" "owners' and that made a lot mores sense since the article dealt with the damage some storm had done to trees.

I had the good grace to laugh at myself and my, albeit momentary, mad leap into 'people who weigh shoes'.

It must be really hard on new people to learn this language.