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LEARNING DANISH

Forty essential words you need to get your car fixed in Denmark

Even foreigners who have lived a long time in Denmark often find themselves struggling for the right words when they need to fix their car. Here are at least 40 essential words to know.

Published: 1 March 2024 15:09 CET
Updated: 10 March 2024 08:27 CET

Forty essential words you need to get your car fixed in Denmark

A file photo of a Danish auto workshop. You might need a lot of new vocabulary if your car develops a fault. Photo: Ida Guldbæk Arentsen/Ritzau Scanpix

Tyres

If you live in a city, it can make sense to keep your summer or winter tyres in a so-called dækhotel, literally a “tyre hotel”. These are often, but not always, managed by a local mechanic.

If you have any luck, the two times a year you pop in to have your tyres changed will outnumber the times you come in for other, more troubling and expensive, reasons.

Winter tyres or vinterdæk, which are designed for winter conditions, are normally switched out with sommerdæk Easter time. Allround-dæk or helårsdæk are tyres which are approved for winter use but can be used in the summer without detracting from performance.

Mechanics

According to Applus Bilsyn, a garage chain which carries out the two-yearly obligatory car safety inspections, bilsyn or periodisk syn, there are five main causes of a car breaking down.

Motorstop (engine failure) can be caused by the failure of elektroniske komponenter (electronic components) like varmemålere (heat sensors), turboladeren (the turbo charger) and elektronisk brændstofindsprøjtning (electronic fuel injection) – which are found in almost all modern cars.

Mekaniske defekter (mechanical defects), often related to high mileage or heavy usage, cause a breakdown of the bremser (brakes), gearkasse (gear box), kobling (clutch), airconditionanlæg (AC system), hjulophæng (suspension) styretøj (steering) or udstødningsrør (exhaust pipe).

Nedsmeltning, literally “meltdown” is caused by a failure to keep up with basic maintenance like oliepåfyldning (topping up oil).

Bilen koger or the car overheating can be a result of overstrain on the engine, for example by driving the vehicle too hard or on very steep or tough terrain beyond its capability. This can also happen if there is not enough vand under kølerhjelmen (water in the radiator).

Punkteringer or punctures are a risk when driving on worn-out tyres. You can have the condition of your winter and summer tyres checked by the garage that changes them over and/or stores them for you.

Other components

If your mechanic starts talking about katten, he or she is not referring to a cat, but instead to the katalysator or “catalytic convertor”, a part of the emissions system which frequently needs repairing or replacing.

The camshaft or cam drive, which in Danish is called the knastaksel or knastdrev, can sometimes be the cause of issues.

The carburetor or karburator is also quite likely to go wrong but its typically fairly cheap to replace. Often problems with a carburetor will mean nothing more than replacing the gasket, or pakning. Gaskets are often sealed in place with a sticky sealant, sometimes referred to by mechanics as apsnor, or “monkey string”.

The cylinder head (topstykke) is much less likely to cause you problems, but if it does get cracked or damaged is normally too expensive to be worth repairing.

Quite often, the main thing you need to do to get your engine going well again will to top it up with engine oil or motorolie.

Gears

You’re quite likely to end up having to visit a mechanic to fix a fault with your gearbox or clutch. The fault could be with the clutch pedal (koblingspedal), with the clutch plate (koblingsskive) or, more likely perhaps, with the clutch friction disc (friktionsskive).

If you can smell burning and are having trouble changing gears, you might also find that the flywheel, svinghjul, which helps smooth out the engine’s pulses, is past its best.

Brakes

The brakes get a lot of wear and tear, so sooner or later, you will need to at least replace the brake pads, or bremseklodser, on your car.

If your brakes go soft and you have to push much harder on the pedal to slow the car down, this could be a problem with the brake servo or bremseservo, a hydraulic or pneumatic system for reducing the force you need to apply when braking. You might also have leaking brake fluid or bremsevæske.

If you’ve got ABS brakes, you might have problems with the ABS control system or ABS styresystem.

It’s also quite common to need to tighten or replace the cable to the handbrake, håndbremse, or parkeringsbremse if it’s electric.

The writer of this article can do little more than change a wheel and top up the oil, so cannot vouch for any mechanics advice in this article. If you spot any misunderstandings about how cars work, or indeed any linguistic errors or misconceptions, please point them out in the comments section below.

If you’d like us to write further articles focused on technical terminology, do let us know in the comments section.

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'Make it fun': How foreigners in Denmark help their kids become bilingual

For foreign residents in Denmark with children, the matter of bilingualism can be one that requires a lot of thought.

Questions can include which languages to speak at home, how important is it to you that your children speak your mother tongue, and how to ensure they are strong at speaking the local language – in this case, Danish.

We previously spoke to an expert about the topic, whose advice included the recommendation that “parent(s) should speak in their mother tongue and stay authentic”, and also touched on school options and technical aspects of language acquisition in kids.

Below is a selection of the overwhelming number of survey responses we received from our readers. Thank you to all those who took time to get in touch.

“My only tip is to speak your own language with your children confidently and consistently whatever people around think or say,” said Radu, a Romanian who lives in Copenhagen.

Radu said he has two children, a 5-year-old who goes to an English-speaking preschool, and a 7-year-old who also went to the preschool and now attends Danish state school. The children speak Danish with their mother and Romanian with their father.

“The Danish system and society are very focused on making foreigners speak Danish, but don’t let them assimilate your children while you are trying to integrate,” Radu said.

“We want them to be multilingual,” he said of his children.

“We think that’s the most beneficial for their development and understanding of the world. We also want them to communicate naturally with both sides of their family and not end up speaking English with relatives,” he said.

Born in Denmark

Silvia, who is Italian and lives in Copenhagen, said that Italian is the only language spoken at home between her, her two children (3 and 6 years) and their father, who is also Italian. The children were born in Denmark.

The children “go to a public Danish school and there they only speak Danish”, she said.

“We want them to be fluent in both Italian and Danish, and we know that they will pick up English very easily in school. Having three languages in the pocket will already be amazing, when it comes to languages, the more the better!,” Silvia wrote.

“The only tip is keep it clear, set a language for a specific context (home/school/family etc…) and keep it, it’s easier for the brain when you can contextualise your learning experience,” she said.

Alison, a reader in Aarhus, said she speaks “90 percent” French to her little boy who was born in Denmark in 2022. His dad is Danish and he attends a local Danish daycare, she explained. The parents speak English to each other.

“We want him to be bilingual, we see it as a plus and he needs French to communicate with French family members,” she said.

“For now we just speak each our language. We make sure to have books in French, listen to songs and watch cartoons in French to make it fun,” she said.

One reader who responded to our survey described the reverse situation – speaking Danish in a home in another country.

“My partner is Danish and she moved to the UK many years ago to live with me. We have two children. We didn’t marry and my partner and two daughters are Danish nationals with Danish passports and citizenship,” said the reader, Dominic.

The family plans to move to Denmark next year and Dominic, as the only non-Danish speaker, has now begun learning Danish. Both languages are spoken at home, he said.

“Mother speaks to daughters in Danish – I speak to them in English. When we all speak it’s in English. I am learning Danish,” he said.

“We have always used two languages. It was natural to raise our daughters with two concurrent cultures because that’s what they are – a mix of both,” he said.

Kelly in Aarhus has two children born in Denmark with one British and one Danish parent.

“We run one parent, one language [also known as the OPOL method, ed.] at home. We might have liked to have sent our kids to a bilingual school but the only one (in Aarhus) just closed so our only real option is to send them to a local folkeskole [state school, ed.],” she said.

“Have two language profiles on your streaming services so they can watch cartoons in both languages,” she tipped.

“Me and my wife came from Nepal to Denmark in 2017,” began Sapan, who lives in Copenhagen’s Vestegn.

“We had our first kid in 2019 and the second one in 2022 (in Denmark),” he said.

“Me and my wife communicate most of the time at our home in our native tongue which is Nepalese. This is to ensure that the kids can understand Nepalese language as well,” he said, adding that the children now attend Danish preschool.

“We are really careful and don’t want them to struggle with their Danish language so we help them with the Danish at home as well. Both of us have been to Danish language school. We allow only books, TV programmes, etc in Danish at home. We also help them to translate both languages,” he said.

“We want them to be multilingual so that they have multiple choices for their future”, Sapan said.

Moved to Denmark

Other readers, who moved to Denmark after their children were born, described the experience of older children learning Danish.

“I have two kids (9 and 13, today). We were all born and raised in Brazil. When we moved to Denmark, two years ago, they were 7 and 11 and were fluent in Portuguese and speak a little English,” wrote Luiz, who lives in Aalborg.

The children now go to a Danish state school where they mainly speak Danish, he said.

“It is great to see how they developed both Danish and English in the last two years,” he said.

“I had an amazing experience with the folkeskole. There, both my kids had Danish classes full time during the first six months, together with other internationals. Teachers were great and, today, both of them are attending the regular classes on the second and seventh grade,” he explained.

“It helped us a lot to watch cartoons in Danish (thanks, Ramasjang!) and often visit the library and borrow some books for them to read,” Luiz said.

Another reader said that she sometimes found it difficult to always use her mother tongue in her family setting in Denmark.

More than two languages

“We are German and American and moved with our children (son, now eight and daughter, five) to Denmark two years ago. Everyone understands both languages but when we are all together we speak mostly English,” wrote Cornelia from Copenhagen.

“Mum and Dad speak English together, but when the kids are there I try to speak German. Kids might answer in all three languages but Danish is their strongest now,” she said.

“Both kids are in a Danish environment. Son has some English-speaking friends, which is so important! I am having problems to maintain the German because I am now the only one here who speaks it to the kids, outside family and friends abroad,” she explained.

“We are trying to maintain trilingualism. Every language is an enrichment and will open future possibilities. We read books and watch TV in all three languages,” she added.

The highest number of languages spoken by children among our survey responses was four: Turkish, Italian, Danish and English.

Deniz in Copenhagen said his children, age 3 and 7, were born in Denmark to Turkish and Italian parents.

“Mom speaks Turkish with the kids. Dad speaks Italian with the kids. Mom and Dad speak English and Italian to each other,” he explained.

The children attend Danish daycare and school and “speak Turkish with each other when they play together. They speak Danish, Italian, Turkish or English when other family members or friends are around them,” he said.

Deniz explained that he preferred to bring up the children in a multilingual environment “so that they feel they are rooted in Denmark but they also feel connected to Turkey and Italy and communicate with family.”

“English is also important to communicate with everyone,” he said.

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