I don't know if we've mentioned it before, but Danes have many required pre-set social phrases / sayings that are very situation specific. It's in the Danish social contract that you say these things in these specific situations. Kind of a structured social nicety. People don't deviate from the phrasing.
It's weird because I would never describe Danes as overly polite. This is not a hold-the-door / smile / have-a-nice-day / how-are-you sort of society. I mean, this is a language without a real word for please, but in these situations Danes have a very structured call-and-response brand of polite-ness. Or is that politesse? Thanks Mick!
Let's rattle off a few.
Tak for mad!
Literally "Thanks for food!". We have a weekly morgen brød on Friday - literally morning bread, but more appropriately breakfast. I got into the details of morgen brød here, but basically one person in the group brings in a bunch of breakfast stuff and we eat it. When things are done at breakfast, everyone thanks the person that brings the breakfast and ALWAYS says it as tak for mad.
Tak for kage!
Thanks for cake. So this one is pretty much like tak for mad except that it's specifically for when people bring in dessert to celebrate something - a birthday, a publication, a new child, etc. Danes use kage in the way Brits use "pudding" to describe any dessert.
Velbekommen
Literally, enjoy the refreshments. This is something you say before digging in to eat. We don't really have a comparable phrase in English - we've stolen bon appétit, and that's probably the closest direct translation.
Tak for sidste!
Thanks for last (night). This one is a next day thank you for everyone involved in some sort of event / activity. Each person involved will - when they see someone involved in the activity for the first time since the activity took place - say this. There's another variation of the phrase I can't remember, but it's applied in the same way.
God weekend!
Good weekend. When people leave for the day on Friday, EVERYONE says this. Again, it never deviates. Mostly it's funny because "weekend" is obviously an English word. Week in Danish is uge. I don't think that there really is a Danish word for weekend, it's just weekend. Weekend. Weekend. Weekend.
Godt Nytår!
Happy New Year. You hear this one all through January - you're expected to say it to friends / colleagues the first time that you see them in the new year. As many people are still on vacation into the 2nd week of January, you still hear a ton of godt nytår's well beyond the point at which I would think it's still "New Year".
Morgen / God morgen
This one's pretty simple and not really specific at all to Denmark - it's just good morning. You get a lot of god morgen or just morgen every morning. I get a lot of practice so it's probably the first and only phrase that I can say in Danish that comes off well.
Anyway, this morning a colleague popped into the office with the standard god morgen and she followed that up with "Collin, do you like beef jerky?". The answer was obviously yes.
This resulted in about ten packs of Jack Link's jerky being plopped on my desk. Happy Valentine's day to me.
It's Friday and now I have a bag-full-o beef jerky. God weekend indeed.
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