To buy a pig in a poke – a Danish-German language collaboration on fixed expressions

Have you ever “bought a pig in a poke”?
If you speak Danish (at købe katten i sækken) or German (die Katze im Sack kaufen), you might already know this phrase. If not, you are about to discover why idioms and fixed expressions are so fascinating – and why they matter for communication across languages.

Share your favorite expressions with the project here.

The project

Knowing and being able to use each other’s language is one of the most important prerequisites for a well-functioning community. For the Danish-German border region, this applies in particular, since knowledge and command of the neighbor’s language cannot be taken for granted. German faces difficult conditions in Denmark, while Danish as a neighboring language is mostly alive in South Schleswig. In the eastern part of the Danish-German Interreg region, by contrast, the Danish language plays a much smaller role.

The project ‘To Buy a Pig in a Poke | Die Katze im Sack kaufen’ aims to make the neighboring languages in the border region more visible and accessible to people on both sides of the border. The project focuses on fixed phrases and idiomatic expressions – that is, expressions which cannot always be translated literally but may carry historical and cultural significance and, above all, can be essential for successful communication. An important sub-goal of the project is also to help awaken and strengthen interest and joy in language and language learning, as well as a playful and creative engagement with language.

The project partners are the University of Southern Denmark and the Deutsche Auslandsgesellschaft e.V., Lübeck, but the project is driven by an established working group consisting of students and teachers from educational institutions on both sides of the border. The project addresses citizens, students, teachers, and pupils alike.

As part of the project, teaching material on fixed expressions is being developed. It includes guidance for use both in neighboring-language teaching and in facilitating Danish-German encounters between pupils and students who are learning each other’s language. The material draws on approaches from multilingualism and neighboring-language pedagogy, with one of its key building blocks being the collection of German, Danish, and international ‘favorite expressions.’ This collection was launched at the International German Teachers’ Conference (IDT, https://idt-2025.de/) in Lübeck, held from July 28 to August 1 this year, where both citizens and conference participants were invited to share their favorite expressions in German, Danish, and other languages.

Idioms in everyday use

As language users, we are often not aware that (or how) we use fixed expressions, since in our mother tongue we have practically absorbed them with our mother’s milk [fået dem ind med modermælken] – and we rarely notice it when applying them. In both Danish and German one can ‘show teeth’ [vise tænder / Zähne zeigen], meaning to display aggression. But whereas German uses ‘pudse’ [Zähne putzen] for brushing teeth, Danish uses ‘børste’ [børste tænder] instead.

There is also a difference in whether – and how – a Dane greets a German with a Guten Tag! or a playful Guten Heute (Leute)! In both languages we wish each other a good meal, but in German it is Guten Appetit! while in Danish it is velbekomme! And after the meal, the Dane will typically thank the host with tak for mad! (‘thanks for the food’), while the German neighbor – perhaps with the same intention – compliments the meal (Das Essen hat sehr gut geschmeckt!).

Fixed expressions contain a wealth of cultural-historical knowledge and linguistic imagery, which also hold creative potential – something that is often exploited in advertising. In both German and Danish, this knowledge partly stems from a common linguistic origin. For this reason, there are also many similarities between fixed expressions in the two languages, such as at købe katten i sækken (‘to buy a pig in a poke’) [die Katze im Sack kaufen]. But there are also differences. Many expressions differ in their form, such as at være en dråbe i havet (‘to be a drop in the ocean’) vs. ein Tropfen auf den heißen Stein sein (‘to be a drop on the hot stone’); døgnet rundt (‘around the clock’) vs. Tag und Nacht (‘day and night’); or én fugl i hånden er bedre end ti på taget (‘a bird in the hand is worth ten on the roof’) vs. besser einen Spatz in der Hand als eine Taube auf dem Dach (‘better a sparrow in the hand than a pigeon on the roof’). In addition, einen Vogel haben (‘to have a bird’) in German means something entirely different than at have en fugl in Danish – namely, in English terms, ‘to have a screw loose.’

Many fixed expressions exist only in one of the two languages. In Danish, for example, one can either be lucky and ‘draw the longest straw’ [trække det længste strå] or be unlucky and ‘draw the shortest straw’ [trække det korteste strå], whereas in German one can only ‘draw the short straw’ [den Kürzeren ziehen]. Translating such expressions literally only makes sense if an equivalent exists in the other language. This can be illustrated with Danish expressions such as holde tungen lige i munden (‘keep one’s tongue straight in one’s mouth’), meaning to stay concentrated and careful while doing something difficult, or stå med håret/fletningerne/skægget i postkassen (‘stand with one’s hair/braids/beard in the mailbox’), meaning to find oneself in a problematic situation where one feels powerless, often as a result of being disappointed, let down, or tricked. Rendered literally in German as die Zunge gerade im Mund halten or mit den Haaren im Briefkasten stehen, they make no sense.

False friends

Other expressions, the so-called false friends, look the same or almost the same at first glance but differ slightly or greatly in meaning. An example is slå noget sammen (Danish: ‘to put things together into a whole, to add, to unite’) and etwas / jemanden zusammenschlagen (German: ‘to beat one thing against another; to beat someone up brutally’). Another case is auf etwas hereinfallen (German: ‘to fall for something, to be deceived’), which does not correspond to the Danish at falde i (‘to give in to a temptation’) but rather to at hoppe på den (literally: ‘to jump onto it,’ meaning ‘to fall for something’). Such expressions often turn out to be a kind of linguistic trap that can cause great confusion in communication.

English influence

With regard to the cultural aspect, it is also noteworthy that some of the more recent German and Danish fixed expressions that resemble each other share a common source – namely the English language. Examples include forms of address such as Liebe alle / Kære alle (‘Dear all’) or expressions like Am Ende des Tages / ved enden af dagen (‘at the end of the day’). From English also comes, for instance, the expression golden handshake, which has spread so that one can now receive both et gyldent håndtryk in Danish and einen goldenen Handschlag in German.

With its focus on fixed expressions, the project highlights a linguistic and cultural phenomenon which in neighboring-language teaching in German and Danish does not always receive sufficient attention – but which is indispensable for communication.

The project At købe katten i sækken – Faste vendinger på nabosprogene dansk og tysk is supported by Borgerprojektfonden under the Interreg Deutschland-Danmark programme and by the project partners.

Would you like to contribute your favorite expressions?
If you know fixed expressions in Danish, German, or other languages that you think deserve to be shared and discussed within the project, you can send them to the project group via this link.

Erla Hallsteinsdóttir is affiliated with the Department of Communication and Culture at Aarhus University. She holds a Dr. Phil. degree in Germanic linguistics from Leipzig University with a thesis on understanding idioms in German as a foreign language. Her research includes topics such as phraseology, intercultural understanding, Danish-German communication, stereotypes and corpus linguistics. She is a board member of the European Society of Phraseology (EUROPHRAS).

Irene Simonsen is affiliated with the Department of Design, Media and Educational Science at the University of Southern Denmark. She holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics with a focus on Danish as a second and foreign language for German speakers. Her research areas include Danish-German studies in text linguistics, genre linguistics, and phraseology, particularly with regard to language teaching and literacy in L2 contexts. She also works on the development of neighboring-language teaching between German and Danish.

Leave a Comment Cancel reply