HackerTube

Danish language

snurreCited 8× on HN, 2016–2026
YouTube
comedy · general · evergreen · 2016–2026 on HN

A sketch from the Norwegian NRK show Uti Var Hage poking fun at the Danish language and how hard it is to understand.

HN posts it as a joke in threads about Denmark, Danes or languages that are hard to understand.

8 comments from Hacker News

@encom2026-05 · in “AI Pointer from DeepMind”

>non english languages (god forbid bilingualism) In my experience, any combination of computers + speech + danish has, so far without exception been terrible. Last time I tested ChatGPT, it couldn't understand me at all. I spoke both in my local dialect and as close to Rigsdansk [π] as I could manage. Unusable performance, and in any case I should be able to talk normally, or there's no point. It was about a year ago - it may have improved but I doubt it. I'm completely done trying to talk to machines. Pre-emptive kamelåså: ▶ this video [π] link

@encom2025-12 · in “Ask HN: Is building a calm, non-gamified learning app a mistake?”

I've tried speaking danish to ChatGPT and asking it very simple questions. I even tried using complete words and pronouncing them properly (inb4 kamelåså)[1], but it didn't help. I didn't manage to have it transcribe a single sentence properly. [1] ▶ this video

@dcrazy2025-07 · in “Denmark's Dark Secret: How 6M People Fooled Us All”

> The way I see it, whenever a foreigner is around, they speak “Danish” and once at home they go back to speaking a real language … probably close to Norwegian. Ironic, given there are two official standards for written Norwegian, and no universally agreed-upon way to pronounce the more popular one (Bokmål). > When you are walking in the streets of Copenhagen, and you hear around you the beautiful language full of soft Ds, stød, uvular R and voiceless plosives, sounding like a rotten potato in the throat of a weary donkey ; Know that they don’t understand each other either. > They are basically saying blah blah blah to each other, moving their heads and gesturing, acting as if they could be understood by another sentient being. Even the Danish state broadcaster agrees: ▶ this video

@theshrike792024-07 · in “Why is Chile so long?”

Danes and legibility isn't something people say often, even Danes themselves can't always understand other Danes: ▶ this video

@bryanrasmussen2019-11 · in “In Defense of Latin”

Surely people care, but people are able to understand you or will try their darndest. This ability to understand is completely missing from Danish, for example, because (I believe) of the many different vowel sounds and other pronunciation quirks - the result is if you do not speak Danish well most Danes will shut down trying to understand you. Thank God for English in that circumstance. Indeed my teacher used to joke that the most common phrase in Danish is "Hvad siger du" (what are you saying) because it is so difficult for Danes to even correctly understand each other - a funny Norwegian video on this ▶ this video