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DANISH LANGUAGE

TELL US: Which Danish word should the English language adopt?

The number of English loan words in the Danish dictionary is growing, but which Danish word would you like to see borrowed in the other direction?

Published: 5 November 2021 16:59 CET
If you could drop any Danish word into the English language, which one would it be?
If you could drop any Danish word into the English language, which one would it be?Photo by Kane Reinholdtsen on Unsplash

The authoritative dictionary of the Danish language, Den Danske Ordbog, has been updated with 214 new words.

As is usually the case when new words are added to the Danish dictionary, a significant number are popular English loan words.

This year’s additions include cringe, disrupte (‘to disrupt’ with Danish grammar), snooze and gamechanger (contracted into a single word grammatically in Danish).

But what Danish word do you think the English language would benefit from borrowing the other way? Which Danish word just can’t be boiled down to a succinct English equivalent? Which concept is easier to express in the Nordic tongue? Are there any Danish words you’d just like to be able to say more?

We’d love to hear your thoughts — please take a look at the survey below.

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DANISH LANGUAGE

How to call bullsh*t in Danish

Know someone who pretends to know what they have no idea about, who outright lies or who brags too much? These words will help you call out a bullsh*tter.

Published: 23 April 2024 14:15 CEST
How to call bullsh*t in Danish

In the internet age, the world is full of people who pretend to be experts and all-knowledgeable when in fact they don’t have the foggiest idea what they’re talking about. 

You may have hoped that the translation of bullshit in Danish would be tyrelort, using the literal translations of bull (tyr) and ‘shit’ or ‘crap’ (lort), a mild Danish swearword that you can say in most situations.

Unfortunately, this is not the case. There are several words for bullshit in Danish, but the most common one is probably just ‘bullshit’.

Danish has a propensity for loaning swear words from English and this is no exception.

READ ALSO: Olympic-level swearing: Why do Danes drop the F-bomb so often?

Like in English, bullshit can be both a noun and a verb in Danish. In the latter case, it takes on Danish grammar and becomes at bullshitte, ‘to bullshit’, as in han bullshitter mig or ‘he’s bullshitting me’.

If you want to exclaim ‘bullshit!’ like you would in English, but using a Danish word, there are a number of other options available. Vrøvl or sludder which both mean something akin to ‘nonsense’ are probably the most common, but there are other, more eclectic words like øregas or even humbug, which sounds like something a Dickensian character would say but is pronounced slightly differently.

READ ALSO: How to call bullsh*t in Spanish

Alternatively, short phrases like det er løgn (that’s a lie) or der er pure opspind (that’s pure fantasy) will do a similar job.

Returning to the theme of loan words, you will also be understood as calling out bullshit if you exclaim det er fake! (that’s fake or false) in response to someone’s spurious claims. The migration of ‘fake’ into the Danish language is a very recent one, probably linked to the emergence of ‘fake news’ as a phenomenon over the last decade or so.

The verb at bullshitte can be switched out with at bluffe (to bluff), at lyve (to lie) and at bedrage (to defraud) among others.

So can you ‘bullshit a bullshitter’ in Danish?

The answer is not really, because ‘bullshitter’ meaning ‘person who bullshits a lot’ is the only form of the English version of the word that hasn’t really been adopted in Danish.

Instead, you’ll have to really on more Danish-sounding words like løgner (liar), løgnhals (liar, literally ‘lie-throat’), mytoman (‘mythoholic’) and charlatan (charlatan).

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