Text: Public Signs and Notices

The fastest way to feel literate in a new country is to understand its signs. Danish public notices are short, blunt, and grammatically distinctive — they use constructions you rarely meet in a textbook dialogue: the -s passive, verbless commands, bare imperatives, and the word venligst, which is the closest Danish comes to "please". Read this page once and the doors, walls and platforms of Denmark suddenly start talking to you.

The signs

Here is a representative set of real notices you will see in shops, streets, stations and stairwells:

Adgang forbudt — No entry / Access prohibited Ingen adgang — No access Rygning forbudt — No smoking Træd varsomt — Tread carefully Cyklerne fjernes — Bicycles (will be) removed Billetter sælges her — Tickets sold here Tryk her — Press here Træk / Skub — Pull / Push Venligst luk døren — Please close the door I tilfælde af brand — benyt trappen — In case of fire, use the stairs Adgang forbudt for uvedkommende — No unauthorised access

Notice how few of them contain a "normal" finite verb with a subject. Danish signage prefers three compressed grammatical patterns. Let's take them in turn.

The -s passive: Cyklerne fjernes, Billetter sælges

Danish has two passives. One uses blive + participle (Cyklerne bliver fjernet, "the bicycles are being removed"). The other simply glues -s onto the infinitive — and this is the passive of signs, rules and procedures. It is impersonal, agentless, and feels official, which is exactly the tone a notice wants.

The agent — who removes or sells — is left completely unspoken, which is the point: a sign speaks for an institution, not a person. Note too that the -s form is built on the infinitive, so the spelling can shift slightly (sælge → sælges, fjerne → fjernes, lukke → lukkes).

Verbless and "forbidden" notices: Adgang forbudt, Rygning forbudt

The most common prohibition format is noun + forbudt, with no verb at all. Forbudt is the past participle of (at) forbyde "to forbid", used here adjectivally: "[X is] forbidden".

• Adgang forbudt = "[Access is] forbidden" → No entry.
• Rygning forbudt = "[Smoking is] forbidden" → No smoking. (Rygning is the verbal noun of (at) ryge "to smoke".)
• Parkering forbudt = No parking.

The verb er ("is") is simply omitted — the reader supplies it. Equally common is the bare quantifier Ingen ("no") + noun:

• Ingen adgang = "No access".
• Ingen parkering = "No parking".

A longer official version adds for uvedkommende ("for unauthorised persons"): Adgang forbudt for uvedkommende.

A related compressed form uses the bare infinitive with ikke for a polite-but-firm general instruction, common on packaging and machines: Ikke ryge, Ikke berøre ("Do not touch"), Må ikke vendes ("This way up", literally "must not be turned").

Imperatives: Tryk, Træk, Skub, Træd

When a sign wants you to do something physical, it uses the bare imperative — the verb stem with no ending and no subject. This is the grammatical heart of "push/pull/press" signage.

The imperative is formed by dropping the infinitive -e: trykke → tryk, trække → træk, træde → træd. Mind the diacritics: træk, træd and træde all carry æ, and træd (tread) is a different word from tryk (press). See The Imperative for the full formation rules and exceptions.

Venligst — the closest thing to "please"

English drops "please" into nearly every request. Danish has no exact equivalent in everyday speech — politeness is usually carried by tone, question form (Vil du...?), or the modal particle lige. On signs and formal notices, however, you will meet venligst, an adverb that means roughly "kindly / be so good as to". It sits in front of an imperative or -s passive to soften an instruction without weakening it.

The last example shows a sibling of venligst: bedes ("is requested to"), an -s passive of (at) bede "to ask", used in very formal written instructions. Both venligst and bedes belong to (formal) written register; in spoken Danish a person would not say venligst luk døren to a friend — they would say kan du lige lukke døren? ("can you just close the door?").

A note on compounds in signage

Danish writes compounds as single words, and signs are full of them: mobiltelefon (mobile phone), nødudgang (emergency exit), parkeringsforbud (parking ban), adgangsforbud (access ban). English would use two separate words ("emergency exit"); Danish glues them together, sometimes with a linking -s- (parkeringsforbud). Splitting them — writing nød udgang — is a genuine error in Danish. See Compound Spelling.

Mis-transfer alert

English speakers reading or writing Danish notices most often go wrong by importing a spoken "please" everywhere. Venligst is correct on a sign, but learners then over-apply it, or — worse — translate "please" with a literal tak ("thanks"), which means something different. The other frequent slip is splitting a compound noun.

Recap

• -s passive (cyklerne fjernes, billetter sælges) is the agentless, official voice of rules and procedures.
• Noun + forbudt and Ingen + noun make verbless prohibitions; the bare infinitive + ikke gives general instructions.
• Imperatives (tryk, træk, skub, træd, benyt) are the verb stem with no ending — the language of push/pull/press.
• Venligst (and the very formal bedes) is "please" only in writing; spoken Danish carries politeness through question form and lige, never through a literal "please".