{"id":378,"date":"2018-12-07T14:33:05","date_gmt":"2018-12-07T14:33:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/histories.com\/wp\/?p=378"},"modified":"2018-12-08T11:21:53","modified_gmt":"2018-12-08T11:21:53","slug":"you-have-to-wonder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/histories.com\/wp\/2018\/12\/07\/you-have-to-wonder\/","title":{"rendered":"You have to Wonder…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I learned early on that some words in Danish have double meanings. “Skat, the Danish word for darling, also means taxes, the kind you pay. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Danish Tax Authority is called Skat. Now, that’s a bit odd for someone from the U.S.  where many people have a less than favorable opinion about paying taxes and even more problematic associations about the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which is the U.S. version of Skat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve been going to Danish language classes in an attempt to learn enough Danish to watch the news. I have learned something though not enough yet to hold a real conversation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of what we learned yesterday was to ask and answer the question, “are you married?” Of course, that’s a big part of why I relocated to Denmark. The Danish word for married is “gift,” which for English speakers seems pretty reasonable – marriage is a gift of sorts. Unfortunately the English meaning for “gift” translates to the Danish word “gave.” There is however a double meaning for the Danish word, “gift.” Gift means both married and poison. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There’s another word with a double meaning that raises issues. “Boller” means buns (what Americans’ call rolls), the kind you eat and in Danish slang it also means the US equivalent of boff, boink, or bone. Yes that’s right buns and sex.  
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I’ll let that sink in for a while. Darling and taxes. Buns and sex. Married and poison. It does make you wonder about Danes’ attitudes towards love, sex, and marriage. I’m sure there are more of these words because the humor here can be as dark as the winter outside.
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I learned early on that some words in Danish have double meanings. “Skat, the Danish word for darling, also means taxes, the kind you pay. The Danish Tax Authority is called Skat. Now, that’s a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[14,12,10,13,11],"class_list":["post-378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beginnings","tag-adventure","tag-danish","tag-double-entendre","tag-english","tag-language"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/histories.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/histories.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/histories.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/histories.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/histories.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/histories.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":384,"href":"https:\/\/histories.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions\/384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/histories.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/histories.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/histories.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}