“Tak for alt” (Thanks for everything) on tombstones is NOT a greeting from the one who passed away, but a greeting from the family and relatives to the person whos’s died.
Tak for kaffe, means "oh, wow" when hearing about something negatively overwhelming. If you're just had coffee with someone, and you say "Tak for kaffe", it just means thank you for coffee.
Sometimes I find myself watching so much english speaking media, the last 10-15 years especially British. I consume so much that I sometimes in my everyday life forget what certain terms and phrases are called in Danish even though I know what they mean. Gotta love a British panelshow.
Skat which equivalent to the word "honey" that Americans use instead of their significant other's name also has another use case. It is also usually used by parents to their children.
8:05 The most common phrase said instead of "Please" would be something like "Må jeg bede om" (May I please) or "Vil du være så venlig" (Would you be so kind/friendly)
the literal translation of 'bede' (pray) is interesting too. I wonder if we are, as such, not speaking to the person directly (granted we are..) but asking the gods for it and having that manifested in the person doing it. You know, like when Granny would dramatically hint 'how nice it would be..' if someone were to get her coffee or help her with this or that!? 'Eh, that potatosalad is out of reach, I pray that someone aids me in getting some - ah, cheers Gorm'
Robe Trotting that we just watched, has a lot of great video's about Denmark, the language, customs and all sorts of stuff. Can only recommend reacting to more of their video's.
@4:13 : the word Kæreste. Try say the first part as in the English word Care and add the ending ste and compare to how they pronounce kæreste. Hopefully it helps
Great video :) As a Dane, I do love coffee and pastry but I'm not eating them every day though :D I think I average around 3 days a week when it comes to pastries. My favorites are propably tebirkes and spandaur :)
The "getting a kid" the Danish equivalent word for "getting" here holds a bit different meaning/feel than the English word. Which is how it makes more sense in Danish than English.
9:00 It really depends on how you pronounce it. There's nothing wrong with saying "Tak for kaffe" if you were drinking coffee but for anything else it's usually said in a sarcastic way and you would know it's not meant in a thankfull way.
The thing about the Nordic languages, they have had a lot of influence on the English language- especially the British variety. Some words are very close to what they would be in English. Like window. Goodbye is farvel. Which if you split it up “far vel” which kinda translates to fare well or fair well. Like have a good trip or be well.
A common alternative to "Tak for alt" on headstones, is "Tak for det du var" meaning "Thank you for what you were" - an open-ended and non-specific compliment and reminiscence of the person who died, for the positivity they brought to others.
You can find Danish pastry in London at Ole & Steen. Scandinavian Kitchen have pastry and food. I think it's also a place called Nordic bakery in London.
Snails, are because theyre rolled, and then it looks like the spiral of a snails shell. Also Ja Ja, is like "sure" you can use it like, "sure i want to go" or like "yeah, sure" like as a doubt
I have to object; "we are getting a kid" - I think it sounds like people speaking bad English. I'm Danish and I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that. Remember, they are talking about English expressions, but in Danish we would also use the verb "to have'. "Vi skal have et barn" = 'We're going to have a baby".
You would be amazed by how many very similar basic words we have in Danish ( + the very similar Norwegian and Swedish languages ) compared to English - and there are many grammatical similarities as well. "skat" is the "same" word as "scot" as in "scotfree" 😊
13:00 In some schools depending on where you live in Denmark children are taught English from the first grade. Other languages taught are German and French besides Danish of course. French is usually optional but German is mandatory starting from 4th - 6th grade. Again depending on the school.
I think if you consider the pregnancy in 'phases', the "getting a kid" phrase makes more sense. The mother "gets" a kid from the father to begin with, when the process is started, and the father "gets" a kid from the mother when the baby is delivered
About the "getting a baby"-thing. In danish that goes like "Vi skal have et barn". Note that our word for "get" literally is "have". I'm quite sure that english "have" and danish "have" goes back to the same germanic root.
"Have" means the same thing in both languages. The Danish translation of "get" is "få". "Getting a present" = "Få en gave". "De fik et barn" = "They got a baby". While "Vi skal have et barn" is the normal phrase in Danish, you wouldn't put that in past tense and say "Vi havde et barn", unless you are talking about a baby that you lost.
ja ja is also a frase reference to an old TV-show called Matador ( that is a cultural serie that almost all Danes have seen and many know by heart, kind of like the the English show:"Upstairs Downstairs or "Downtown Appy" ) In Matador there is a person almost only say "ja ja" and "nej nej" (no no) and "Av min arm" (which is a slang and means something like the slang version in English "you don't say"? or "really?" Or "are you serious?
One of the ones that amuses me but still gives me pangs of shame is that we call a 3.5mm headphone jack a 'jackstik' - stik being our work for jack/plug - so we call it a plug plug.. lol that and 'Scum' - our word for foam (be it sea foam or foam sweets..) and one that'll appear every now and then on Graham Norton or the like when they look at Menus.
15:55 In danish there a lot of phrases and words that completely different meaning depeding on how you pronounce them. "Ja ja" is one of them. As said in the video it's sweet and kind. Like "would you like to go the movies", "ja ja selvfølgelig". In english it would translate into "Sure of course". But if you ask "Do want to go shopping?" and it's answered with "ja ja". The meaning is more likely to be "sure whatever".
It's a maritime country, so you will definitely learn the word "halløj/halloei" This word is used as a greeting, another use for "attention please" or if you are a sailor it means "yes sir" or "affirmative". It's root stems from German/Dutch and is a branch of the word "Ahoj" or the Irish version "Ohoj"😂 and really means a lot of different things, but it's one of the words that you use in a loud environment, and one that needs to communicate as you can't really distinguish as other words. You will meet a wide variety of these maritime expressions in particular in Denmark.
Don't let Æ, Ø and Å scare you. They are easy to pronounce, make it your mission to learn them first. Several countries have similar letters with similar sound.
They are not easy to pronounce for foreigners unless they have similar sounds in their language… And English speakers haven’t. The biggest problem when learning Danish was briefly mentioned - we often pronounce words differently from the spelling…
@@berrycarbs English do also have a lot of words pronounced different from spelling. Take "there", where is the "t" sound? BTW, "there" originates from the Vikings, many of the "th" words are from the Vikings. Like cities ending on "by". Derby, Grimsby and so on. English and Danish is not phonetic languages. Spanish are, reading Spanish, you can see how it is pronounced. I do not speak Spanish myself, but it would be nice to be able to see how it is pronounced. One of the big problem with Danish is "D" and "G". When first in a word, they are straight forward, but when they get longer down in a word they change, and in the end they often disappear. Research have shown, that the Danish "D" has 17 variants, luckily it is only 3-4 variants that are needed to speak the language. I would say, it can't take more than 10 minutes, with Google Translate, to learn Æ, Ø and Å, there are just simple sounds. Try OMG, it is very close to ÅMG.
"Ja ja" is a very unenthusiastic yes. It reminds of this quote from Piet Hein: "Man kan sige 'tak', og man kan sige 'tak tak'. 'Tak tak' er so afgjordt en tak mindre." You can say 'tak' or you can say 'tak tak'. 'Tak tak' is definitely a notch less. (Danish has an unrelated word 'tak' meaning notch.) It is fun to hear English speakers saying that in Danish you skip a lot of letters. My impression is that Danish is pronounced much more like it is spelled, and English skips a lot of letters. Take "niece" as example. It means the same in Danish and English. In Danish it is pronounced as spelled: ni-e-se, three syllables. In English it is nis. The e's just get ignored.
No idea who got the idea of adding Finland to Scandinavia or when they added it, our languages are nothing alike compared to Denmark Sweden and Norway we can understand some of each others languages, however Finnish i got no clue what they are saying.
thank you for coffee means thank you for coffee because you had coffee. If we are being ironic, you have no doubt. What we say is what we mean and you have no doubt if we are being ironic like if I say they did well what do you think I mean
Nah males are calling their girlfriend skat because you treasure them and you need to give them offering to keep them Happy, like playing taxes to keep THE MAN abay. Also tak for kaffe is Also a expression of supprice, like: wow, thats a lot. Also what people call a Dane (pastry) we call wienerbrød(wienerbread) as a tribute to the people from wien that brought the kipfel style of bakeed goods(we just made it a bit more fattening).
7:05 It's actually spelled wrong. It's spelled "BÆ". You could spell it bae but you wouldn't spell it like that unless you're using a keyboard that doesn't have the danish letters. The danish letters - Æ (ae), Ø (oe) and Å (aa) was introduced centuries ago dating back to the 1800. Most danes will however understand if you writing the letters the old way if you're letting them know you are. Any sane dane wouldn't understand it right way if they saw the word "bae".
Copenhagen is not Denmark :) it is part of it, but so much more than Copenhagen to Denmark, yeah we get that you want to visit the capital and you see all those videos from there, but Aarhus, Odense etc. has so much history to offer for tourists and culture.
It is a misconception there's no word for please. The word in Danish is "behage" it was way more often used in the last century, my grandparents used it and my old religion teacher used it alot. Here is an example how to use it, "om jeg må behage dem herrer" ; may i please you sir:. Or, Hvis det ikke behager dem, så kan de altid smutte deres vej. "You can always leave and be on your way, if it doesn't please you. Behage/r means please/ing
"Tak for kaffe" doesn't mean "Thanks for wasting my time", like he said. It's more something you say in astonishment over something, usually a high price tag. For instance, if you walk into a restaurant, and the cheapest thing on the menu is £10, you could make this face: 😳and go "Tak for kaffe!!"😤 _Robetrotting_ you showed is a fun channel to learn how Americans view Copenhagen and Denmark in general.
“Tak for alt” (Thanks for everything) on tombstones is NOT a greeting from the one who passed away, but a greeting from the family and relatives to the person whos’s died.
Tak for kaffe, means "oh, wow" when hearing about something negatively overwhelming. If you're just had coffee with someone, and you say "Tak for kaffe", it just means thank you for coffee.
"Thanks for coffee" means "thanks for coffee" IF you've had coffee - if not, it's sarcastic, ironic or meant as a joke, like fx "holy cow".
Yes, like saying "Wow, I am out of here" ( = This is too much - I am leaving ).
Præcis!
Yeah exactly, we usually use the phrase as in "wow" or "oh, my goodness"
Sometimes I find myself watching so much english speaking media, the last 10-15 years especially British. I consume so much that I sometimes in my everyday life forget what certain terms and phrases are called in Danish even though I know what they mean. Gotta love a British panelshow.
Skat which equivalent to the word "honey" that Americans use instead of their significant other's name also has another use case. It is also usually used by parents to their children.
8:05 The most common phrase said instead of "Please" would be something like "Må jeg bede om" (May I please) or "Vil du være så venlig" (Would you be so kind/friendly)
the literal translation of 'bede' (pray) is interesting too. I wonder if we are, as such, not speaking to the person directly (granted we are..) but asking the gods for it and having that manifested in the person doing it. You know, like when Granny would dramatically hint 'how nice it would be..' if someone were to get her coffee or help her with this or that!? 'Eh, that potatosalad is out of reach, I pray that someone aids me in getting some - ah, cheers Gorm'
Robe Trotting that we just watched, has a lot of great video's about Denmark, the language, customs and all sorts of stuff. Can only recommend reacting to more of their video's.
@4:13 : the word Kæreste. Try say the first part as in the English word Care and add the ending ste and compare to how they pronounce kæreste. Hopefully it helps
we do have words for please and that is "BE OM" like you can say "Må jeg be om sukkeren" witch means "Can i please have the suggar"
Bede om -tak. BE OM er jo slang nhusk abostrof så BE' OM!
Great video :) As a Dane, I do love coffee and pastry but I'm not eating them every day though :D I think I average around 3 days a week when it comes to pastries.
My favorites are propably tebirkes and spandaur :)
Reading this while eating tebirkes and drinking coffe- I must be a true Dane after all
The "getting a kid" the Danish equivalent word for "getting" here holds a bit different meaning/feel than the English word. Which is how it makes more sense in Danish than English.
Right… I couldn’t quite recognise the phrase because the difference in sentiment of “getting” between the languages.
9:00 It really depends on how you pronounce it. There's nothing wrong with saying "Tak for kaffe" if you were drinking coffee but for anything else it's usually said in a sarcastic way and you would know it's not meant in a thankfull way.
The thing about the Nordic languages, they have had a lot of influence on the English language- especially the British variety.
Some words are very close to what they would be in English. Like window. Goodbye is farvel. Which if you split it up “far vel” which kinda translates to fare well or fair well. Like have a good trip or be well.
Fare well. Fair is the wrong word here.
A common alternative to "Tak for alt" on headstones, is "Tak for det du var" meaning "Thank you for what you were" - an open-ended and non-specific compliment and reminiscence of the person who died, for the positivity they brought to others.
Kind of funny that you had a Denmark shirt on and i have a shirt with a britsh band on. 😂
Dyscarnate 🤘
You can find Danish pastry in London at Ole & Steen. Scandinavian Kitchen have pastry and food. I think it's also a place called Nordic bakery in London.
Snails, are because theyre rolled, and then it looks like the spiral of a snails shell.
Also Ja Ja, is like "sure" you can use it like, "sure i want to go" or like "yeah, sure" like as a doubt
I have to object; "we are getting a kid" - I think it sounds like people speaking bad English. I'm Danish and I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that.
Remember, they are talking about English expressions, but in Danish we would also use the verb "to have'. "Vi skal have et barn" = 'We're going to have a baby".
You would be amazed by how many very similar basic words we have in Danish ( + the very similar Norwegian and Swedish languages ) compared to English - and there are many grammatical similarities as well.
"skat" is the "same" word as "scot" as in "scotfree" 😊
13:00 In some schools depending on where you live in Denmark children are taught English from the first grade. Other languages taught are German and French besides Danish of course. French is usually optional but German is mandatory starting from 4th - 6th grade. Again depending on the school.
I think if you consider the pregnancy in 'phases', the "getting a kid" phrase makes more sense. The mother "gets" a kid from the father to begin with, when the process is started, and the father "gets" a kid from the mother when the baby is delivered
About the "getting a baby"-thing. In danish that goes like "Vi skal have et barn". Note that our word for "get" literally is "have". I'm quite sure that english "have" and danish "have" goes back to the same germanic root.
"Have" means the same thing in both languages.
The Danish translation of "get" is "få". "Getting a present" = "Få en gave". "De fik et barn" = "They got a baby".
While "Vi skal have et barn" is the normal phrase in Danish, you wouldn't put that in past tense and say "Vi havde et barn", unless you are talking about a baby that you lost.
ja ja is also a frase reference to an old TV-show called Matador ( that is a cultural serie that almost all Danes have seen and many know by heart, kind of like the the English show:"Upstairs Downstairs or "Downtown Appy" )
In Matador there is a person almost only say "ja ja" and "nej nej" (no no) and "Av min arm" (which is a slang and means something like the slang version in English "you don't say"? or "really?" Or "are you serious?
kinda funny. i liked the video but. England actually have alot of old Danish words from viking age too.
139 everyday words and about another 600 have old Norse roots.
One of the ones that amuses me but still gives me pangs of shame is that we call a 3.5mm headphone jack a 'jackstik' - stik being our work for jack/plug - so we call it a plug plug.. lol that and 'Scum' - our word for foam (be it sea foam or foam sweets..) and one that'll appear every now and then on Graham Norton or the like when they look at Menus.
15:55 In danish there a lot of phrases and words that completely different meaning depeding on how you pronounce them. "Ja ja" is one of them. As said in the video it's sweet and kind. Like "would you like to go the movies", "ja ja selvfølgelig". In english it would translate into "Sure of course". But if you ask "Do want to go shopping?" and it's answered with "ja ja". The meaning is more likely to be "sure whatever".
It's a maritime country, so you will definitely learn the word "halløj/halloei" This word is used as a greeting, another use for "attention please" or if you are a sailor it means "yes sir" or "affirmative". It's root stems from German/Dutch and is a branch of the word "Ahoj" or the Irish version "Ohoj"😂 and really means a lot of different things, but it's one of the words that you use in a loud environment, and one that needs to communicate as you can't really distinguish as other words. You will meet a wide variety of these maritime expressions in particular in Denmark.
Don't let Æ, Ø and Å scare you. They are easy to pronounce, make it your mission to learn them first. Several countries have similar letters with similar sound.
They are not easy to pronounce for foreigners unless they have similar sounds in their language… And English speakers haven’t. The biggest problem when learning Danish was briefly mentioned - we often pronounce words differently from the spelling…
@@berrycarbs English do also have a lot of words pronounced different from spelling. Take "there", where is the "t" sound? BTW, "there" originates from the Vikings, many of the "th" words are from the Vikings. Like cities ending on "by". Derby, Grimsby and so on. English and Danish is not phonetic languages. Spanish are, reading Spanish, you can see how it is pronounced. I do not speak Spanish myself, but it would be nice to be able to see how it is pronounced.
One of the big problem with Danish is "D" and "G". When first in a word, they are straight forward, but when they get longer down in a word they change, and in the end they often disappear. Research have shown, that the Danish "D" has 17 variants, luckily it is only 3-4 variants that are needed to speak the language.
I would say, it can't take more than 10 minutes, with Google Translate, to learn Æ, Ø and Å, there are just simple sounds. Try OMG, it is very close to ÅMG.
"Ja ja" is a very unenthusiastic yes. It reminds of this quote from Piet Hein:
"Man kan sige 'tak', og man kan sige 'tak tak'. 'Tak tak' er so afgjordt en tak mindre."
You can say 'tak' or you can say 'tak tak'. 'Tak tak' is definitely a notch less. (Danish has an unrelated word 'tak' meaning notch.)
It is fun to hear English speakers saying that in Danish you skip a lot of letters. My impression is that Danish is pronounced much more like it is spelled, and English skips a lot of letters. Take "niece" as example. It means the same in Danish and English. In Danish it is pronounced as spelled: ni-e-se, three syllables. In English it is nis. The e's just get ignored.
6:00 Skat means alot of thing. Treasure is one but it is more common translated to tax. Paying your taxes "Betale din skat".
Getting a kid, Danish = få et barn. Getting vil never mean the same af "" få".
Tack in Swedish means Thank you.
No idea who got the idea of adding Finland to Scandinavia or when they added it, our languages are nothing alike compared to Denmark Sweden and Norway we can understand some of each others languages, however Finnish i got no clue what they are saying.
"Ja ja" is extremely context dependent in Danish. It can even mean "no".
Ja ja det er godt med dig.
thank you for coffee means thank you for coffee because you had coffee. If we are being ironic, you have no doubt. What we say is what we mean and you have no doubt if we are being ironic like if I say they did well what do you think I mean
Nah males are calling their girlfriend skat because you treasure them and you need to give them offering to keep them Happy, like playing taxes to keep THE MAN abay.
Also tak for kaffe is Also a expression of supprice, like: wow, thats a lot.
Also what people call a Dane (pastry) we call wienerbrød(wienerbread) as a tribute to the people from wien that brought the kipfel style of bakeed goods(we just made it a bit more fattening).
7:05 It's actually spelled wrong. It's spelled "BÆ". You could spell it bae but you wouldn't spell it like that unless you're using a keyboard that doesn't have the danish letters. The danish letters - Æ (ae), Ø (oe) and Å (aa) was introduced centuries ago dating back to the 1800. Most danes will however understand if you writing the letters the old way if you're letting them know you are. Any sane dane wouldn't understand it right way if they saw the word "bae".
I must be insane then. 😉
You guys may want to try the more formel Danish greetings "god-dag" [go(ð)-day(gh] = good day (🙄), farvel [fAr-vel] & "velkommen" 😊
Copenhagen is not Denmark :) it is part of it, but so much more than Copenhagen to Denmark, yeah we get that you want to visit the capital and you see all those videos from there, but Aarhus, Odense etc. has so much history to offer for tourists and culture.
Tak Skat.
R.I.P is the same as Hvil i fred
Remember the Passport now Britain has left the EU/Kontinent. And remember, we all drive in the right side!
When I am drunk, I use both sides of the road. 🤣😉
It is a misconception there's no word for please. The word in Danish is "behage" it was way more often used in the last century, my grandparents used it and my old religion teacher used it alot. Here is an example how to use it, "om jeg må behage dem herrer" ; may i please you sir:. Or, Hvis det ikke behager dem, så kan de altid smutte deres vej. "You can always leave and be on your way, if it doesn't please you.
Behage/r means please/ing
kids start to learn english in 1. grade
"Tak for kaffe" doesn't mean "Thanks for wasting my time", like he said. It's more something you say in astonishment over something, usually a high price tag. For instance, if you walk into a restaurant, and the cheapest thing on the menu is £10, you could make this face: 😳and go "Tak for kaffe!!"😤
_Robetrotting_ you showed is a fun channel to learn how Americans view Copenhagen and Denmark in general.
Scandinavia is only Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Not occasionally Finland and Iceland. 😴