I can confirm that this is true for Danish too except it is 'luftpudebåd', not 'luftputebåt'. Yes, Danish and Norwegian are very similar. So luftpudebåd is the

I can confirm that this is true for Danish too except it is 'luftpudebåd', not 'luftputebåt'. Yes, Danish and Norwegian are very similar. So luftpudebåd is the proper Danish word and hovercraft is the anglicism that is creeping into our language. However, I tried to search for both words on Google limiting the results to the Danish top-level domain and apparently there are three times as many results for hovercraft. This may not be the best statistic for linguistics but it's all I have. I also looked up both words in a Danish encyclopedia (http://denstoredanske.dk http://denstoredanske.dk). There is no article for 'luftpudebåd' and the article for 'hovercraft' has no mention of the word 'luftpudebåd'. So perhaps I'm stuck in the past when I claim that the proper Danish word is luftpudebåd...