Du vs De: The Informality of Danish

If you have learned German (du vs Sie) or French (tu vs vous), you arrive at Danish expecting the same tense calculation before every "you": is this person close enough for the informal form, or do I owe them the polite one? In Danish you can almost always stop calculating. The informal du is the default for virtually everyone — colleagues, classmates, shop staff, your doctor, strangers on the street, and usually your boss. The polite De still exists, but it has retreated so far that using it with an ordinary peer can sound cold, stiff, or even faintly sarcastic — the opposite of the warm respect a German speaker intends with Sie. This page is about the sociolinguistics: who gets du, who (rarely) gets De, and why the safe default is the informal one.

The forms

De is the polite second person, distinguished in writing by a capital D in every form. It is grammatically third-person plural (it takes plural verb agreement historically, though modern Danish verbs don't inflect for person or number, so in practice the verb looks the same).

The capital letters are not optional. Lower-case de / dem / deres is the ordinary third-person plural "they / them / their"; only the capitalised De / Dem / Deres is the polite "you." Dropping the capital turns a respectful address into a reference to some other people entirely. The full pronoun paradigm is laid out in pronouns/personal-subject-object.

Why du is the default

In most of the world's tu/vous-type languages, the informal form is a marked choice you earn through closeness, and the polite form is the unmarked, safe default. Danish is the reverse. Du is the unmarked default, and De is the marked, special-occasion form. A Dane addresses a stranger on the train, the cashier, the plumber, and a new colleague all with du without a second thought.

When De survives

De has not vanished completely. It survives in a handful of well-defined niches, almost all of them either ceremonial, commercial, or generational:

• Royalty and high officials. You address the Queen, the royal family, and certain dignitaries with De. This is a hard rule of protocol, not a matter of taste.
• The very elderly. Some Danes in their eighties and nineties grew up with De and may still expect it, or at least appreciate it. With a clearly elderly stranger, De is a safe sign of respect — but many older people will quickly say du er fint ("du is fine").
• Very formal writing. Official letters from authorities, banks, and some businesses to customers may still use De to strike a formal, deferential tone — Vi takker for Deres henvendelse ("Thank you for your enquiry").
• Some customer service. A few upmarket shops, hotels, and airlines train staff to use De with customers as a courtesy. It is a deliberate brand choice, not the norm.

Why De can sound cold

Here is the counterintuitive part for German and French speakers. Because du is the default warmth, choosing De with an ordinary peer is marked — and the marking is not "extra respect." It signals distance: "I am keeping you at arm's length," or worse, it can read as ironic or sarcastic, as if you were mockingly standing on ceremony. A young shop assistant addressed as De by a customer their own age may feel they are being needled, not honoured. So the polite form does not carry the safe, neutral respect that Sie and vous do; deployed wrongly, it actively chills the interaction.

The plural: I vs De

Danish distinguishes "you" (singular) from "you all" (plural) — something standard English lost. The informal plural is I (always capitalised, even mid-sentence, to distinguish it from nothing else — it is simply spelled with a capital), with object jer and possessive jeres. The polite De covers both singular and plural in its rare formal uses.

Note that I "you all" is capitalised, while i "in" (the preposition) is lower-case — the capital is the only thing telling them apart, so it genuinely matters in writing.

A short history: the du-reform

Danish was not always this informal. Until the late 1960s, De was the expected form between adults who were not on close terms, much as in German today. Then, around 1970, a rapid social shift — the du-reform (du-reformen) — swept De aside. Egalitarian and anti-hierarchical attitudes of the era made the polite form feel old-fashioned and snobbish almost overnight; institutions, workplaces, and broadcasters switched to du across the board. Within a few years, du had become the near-universal default it remains today. This is why older Danes may still reach for De by habit while everyone younger treats it as ceremonial. For the related politeness vocabulary — tak, vær så venlig, undskyld — see expressions/courtesy.

How this differs from English (and German/French)

Modern English has no tu/vous split at all — "you" is "you" for the Queen and your dog alike — so an English speaker has no polite-form instinct to mis-apply, and the natural English warmth maps neatly onto Danish du. The danger is for learners coming through German or French, whose trained reflex is "polite form for strangers, informal form for intimates." Applied to Danish, that reflex produces exactly the wrong register: it makes you sound cold and antiquated. The plural "you all," meanwhile, is something English speakers must consciously acquire, because English collapsed singular and plural "you" centuries ago, whereas Danish keeps du (one person) firmly distinct from I (several).

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• du (informal) is the default for almost everyone — colleagues, strangers, staff, usually your boss.
• De / Dem / Deres (always capitalised) is the polite form, now reserved for royalty, the very elderly, and some formal letters or upmarket service.
• Using De with a peer reads as cold or ironic, not respectful — the reverse of German Sie / French vous.
• The du-reform around 1970 turned De from the norm into a ceremonial relic.
• The informal plural is I / jer / jeres (capital I); don't confuse it with singular du.
• When in doubt, use du.