Dansk Sprognævn, Denmark’s national language board, has launched a nationwide campaign to study Danes’ use of English words and phrases, including finding out which commonly-used English words can be replaced by their Danish alternatives.
It’s hard not to notice the fact that many Danes ‒ particularly younger Danes ‒ regularly use English words when speaking Danish.
For English speakers learning Danish this can be jarring, with Danes commonly mixing English words into speech when there is a perfectly good Danish version available. It can also be difficult for those of us learning Danish to know when to use the Danish words we’ve been taught and when to use the English loanwords we hear Danes using.
The language board’s new campaign, titled Are we good at Danish? roughly ‘Can we say it in Danish?’, hopes to fix that. It’s the first of its kind from the board, according to director Thomas Hestbæk Andersen.
“We want to take the temperature of Danes’ perception of English influence on Danish, and find words which annoy the Danes,” he told the Ritzau newswire.
The aim is to eventually come up with a list of Danish words which can be used to replace English loanwords.
The board’s campaign will run until the end of the year, with members of the public able to submit English words and phrases during that time which they want to eliminate from the Danish language.
It’s also a way to future-proof the Danish language, Andersen said.
“So that we can have a chance to influence how things develop, so we can make sure that Danish is also a fully functional language in all areas of society for many years to come.”
