There’s little doubt that English is influencing the Danish language more and more these days – an expert recently found that upwards of 10 percent of the Danish language is influenced by English.
That trend looks set to continue following the adoption of 780 new words into the official Danish dictionary today. Once again, a number of the new additions hail from English.
Among the approved English-borne words that will have the same meaning in Danish are: cover, clue, daybed, expat, cougar, donut, device, IPA, mobilehome, rockefeller, streetsmart, voiceover, networker and swag.
READ MORE: Super fedt or f*****g lort? English invading the Danish language
Other oddities
Furthermore there were also some IT-inspired words that were adopted, including internetbrowser, VPN, Vlog, videoblogger and youtuber.
Elsewhere, several expressions were also greenlighted this year, including ‘have pikhud på fingrene’ (‘to have penis skin on the fingers’), which means that one has soft hands or sensitive fingers.
Another addition is a new reference to anal sex, ‘sport i toeren’ (‘sport in number 2’), which is a clever reference to back when there were only two TV channels in Denmark and there was sport being shown on TV2.
‘Banditter i habitter’ (‘bandits in suits’) is another new and rather pertinent expression, given the recent money laundering scandals in Denmark.
Other interesting additions include Truckerbad (‘trucker bath/shower’), which is just spraying on deodorant instead of taking a shower, and ‘betonlebbe’ (‘concrete lesbian’), a masculine-looking lesbian.
There were also three new words relating to immigrants – ‘indvandrersprog’ (‘immigrant language’), and ‘indvandrerfjendtlig’ and ‘indvandrerfjendsk’ (which both mean having a negative view of immigrants).
