Thomascountz/danish_notes_and_tips.md

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Danish


Basics 1

Nouns

Danish has two noun genders: Common (or n-words) and neuter (or
t-words) . Each of these have their own article for indefinite
singular. Common words take  en  and neuter words take  et .
In this skill you will only be dealing with indefinite and definite,
singular nouns such as  a boy ,  the woman  etc. The following
skills will gradually introduce you to the plural forms.
Unfortunately, in Danish there is no certain way to tell from a noun
which gender it is. So this you will have to learn by heart. There have
been made attempts to develop a pattern for determining the gender of a
noun from the word itself, and one such can be found 
here .
The short version is that about 80% of nouns are common gender (taking 
en  as the indefinite article), including most living and animate
entities.
The Definite Form

Instead of marking the definite form with an article, Danish uses
postfixing. Simply put, the indefinite article is appended to the end of
the noun to mark definiteness: 
                                -en                              for
common gender and 
                                -et                              for
the neuter gender.

en mand  ( a man , common gender) adds 
                                    -en                                
 and becomes  manden  ( the man ).
vand  ( water , neuter gender) adds 
                                    -et                                
 and becomes  vandet (the water) .

If the noun already ends with 
                                -e                              most
often only 
                                -n                              (for
common) or 
                                -t                              (for
neuter) is appended:

et æble  ( an apple , neuter gender) becomes  æblet  (
the apple ).

To see how simple this really is, have a look at this table:


Indefinite article
Definite postfix


en
-en


et
-et


In some cases an article is used instead of a postfix to mark the
definite form, for example when modifying the noun with an adjective.
But do not worry about this for now, it will be explained later. :)
Furthermore, just to ruin the beautiful simplicity, some nouns change an
internal vowel when put in the definite—Again, more about this later.
Subject Pronouns

Subject pronouns are used to indicate the person performing an action:
In the sentence " you drive a car ," the word  you  informs us who
is driving the car.
While this particular skill only involves singular subject pronouns (I,
you, and he/she, specifically), we will show you all the (personal)
subject pronouns here for completeness. Don't worry, we'll include this
table again later when the rest of the subject pronouns are introduced!


English
Danish


I
jeg


you
du


he, she, it
han, hun, den/det*


we
vi


you (plural)
I**


they
de


* Depending on the grammatical gender of the subject. As a rule of
thumb, use  den  for all living things,  det  for inanimate
objects.
** Always capitalized.
Present Tense Verbs

You will love verbs in Danish. They conjugate not for the subject, not
for the object, nor for the number of people. They only care about the
time (present, past), the aspect (active, passive), and the mood
(indicative, imperative). But do not worry about all that just yet, just
be overjoyed that there are only seven forms of each verb. :)
For now, just know that present tense (things happening right now, or
general statements) end in 
                                -r                             , and
do not change regarding the person carrying out the action. As an
example, look at the conjugations of  at spise  ( to eat ) in the
present:


English
Danish


I eat
jeg spiser


you eat
du spiser


he, she, it eats
han, hun, den/det spiser


we eat
vi spiser


you (plural) eat
I spiser


they eat
de spiser


Isn't that beautiful? Similarly, the only form of  to be  in present (
I am ,  you are ,  he, she, it is , etc.) is simply er:  jeg
er ,  du er , and so on.
To make things even simpler, as to the verb anyway, Danish verbs have no
concept of continuous actions such as  I am eating . When you say 
jeg spiser  it means all of  I eat  (in general),  I am eating
 (right now), or  I will eat  (tomorrow).
Alright, get on it and see you in the next skill!
Basics 2

Subject Pronouns

Here they are again, for your reference:


English
Danish


I
jeg


you
du


he, she, it
han, hun, den/det


we
vi


you (plural)
I*


they
de


* Always capitalized.
Definite Nouns

Once again, this beautifully simple system:


Indefinite article
Definite postfix


en
-en


et
-et


Some examples from the previous skill:

en mand  ( a man , common gender) becomes  manden  (
the man )
vand  ( water , neuter gender) becomes  vandet (the
water) .
et æble  ( an apple , neuter gender) becomes 
æblet  ( the apple ).

Plural Nouns

Nouns form the plural by appending either 
                                -er                            
 (most commonly) or just 
                                -e                             :

en avis  ( a newspaper ) adds 
                                    -er                                
 and becomes  aviser ( newspapers ).
en dreng  ( a boy ) adds 
                                    -e                                
 and becomes  drenge  ( boys ).

Again, if the words ends in an 
                                -e                              the
double-e is eliminated:

en pige  ( a girl ) adds 
                                    -er                                
 and eliminates the double-e to become  piger  ( girls ).

Whether a word uses 
                                -er                              or 
                                -e                              is
unrelated to its grammatical gender, and is something that must be
learned by heart. Furthermore, some nouns do not change at all in the
plural. These must also be learned by heart. There are, however, some
general guidelines:

The 
                                    -er                                
 postfix is the most common one. Nouns containing multiple syllables
usually take the -er ending.
Single syllabic words of the common gender (n-words) often use the 
                                    -e                                
 ending.
Short, single syllabic nouns of the neuter gender are most likely to
remain unchanged in the plural.

Source .
Oh, and remember those irregular nouns we talked about in the previous
lesson? This lesson will introduce the first of them:

en mand  ( a man ) adds no postfix, but becomes  mænd
 ( men ).

Plural Definite Nouns

In the plural definite form (such as  the cars ), nouns in Danish add 
                                -ne                              to
the plural form:

en kvinde  ( a woman ) has the plural  kvinder  (
women ) and adds 
                                    -ne                                
 to become  kvinderne  ( the women ).
en dreng  ( a boy ) has the plural  drenge  ( boys )
and adds 
                                    -ne                                
 to become  drengene  ( the boys ).

This is independent from the grammatical gender of a noun, like the
plural form. Again, however, some nouns are irregular, for example:

en mand  ( a man ) has the plural  mænd  ( men ) but
regains the lost 
                                    -e                                
 in the plural, adding 
                                    -ene                                
 to become  mændene  ( the men ).

Hopefully you are not overwhelmed yet! There are very few irregular
nouns, and most follow the system, that we can now show as a complete
table including singular/plural and definite/indefinite:


Singular,
indefinite
Singular,
definite
Plural,
indefinite
Plural,
definite


en
-en
-er, -e
-erne, -ene


et
-et
-er, -e
-erne, -ene


Enjoy these lessons and see you in the next one :)
Common Phrases

A Note on Capitalization

As you might have noticed already, in Danish, the first person personal
pronoun is not capitalized: It might be  I eat  in English, but in
Danish it's  jeg spiser .
There are a number of other things, which are capitalized in English,
that are not capitalized in Danish. This includes names of languages, as
you will notice in this skill, but also days of the week and names of
months.
Giving the Time of the Day

This skill will teach you a number of words you can use to greet and
part with people. Some are generic and can be used at any time, such as 
hej  and  farvel . The word  hej  is a funny case that
can both be used as a greeting and a farewell. Sometimes, for farewells,
it is doubled into  hej hej .
Others can only be used at specific times of the day, and primarily as
greetings:

Godmorgen  means  good morning  and so should only be used
in the morning, logically.
Godaften  translates to  good evening  and is usually
applicable after the work day ends.
Goddag , meaning  good day  can be used more freely, but is
usually not used when  godmorgen  or  godaften  would be
more appropriate.
Just as in English,  godnat  ( good night ) is not used as a
greeting, but only in parting -- or in wishing a friend or loved one
a blissful sleep!

Danish has a few extra greetings for specific periods of the day, which
will not be taught here. But don't be surprised if people give you
either  god formiddag  or  god eftermiddag  for the
period between morning and noon, and the afternoon, respectively.
The Case of the Missing " Please"

Unfortunately, Danish has no simple translation for the word  please .
Rather, asking for things politely involves some set phrases and modal
verbs. Naturally, this will not appear in this skill, so don't fret. :)
We apologize deeply. We're really quite polite, truly!
Food

Sticking Words Together

You might already have noticed this trend. If not, this skill contains a
few examples of how much Danes love to form new words by sticking two or
more words together.
We call these "compound nouns", although sometimes they have become so
ingrained in the language that they're really just plain words now. In
some cases the words are just put together directly (no space), and in
other cases they require a little glue, in the form of an 
                                -e-                              or
an                                  -s-                            
 between them.
This skill contains the following words built from individual meanings:

Jordbær  comes from  jord  meaning  earth  or 
ground  and  bær meaning  berry : So, a berry growing near
the ground?  Strawberry !
Svinekød  is constructed from  svin , the glue 
                                    -e-                                
 and  kød . The first part means  pig  (or, more literally, 
swine ) and the second  meat . Meat from a pig, or as it's
called in English,  pork .
Morgenmad  consists of the words  morgen  and  mad
, translating to  morning  and  food . Put them together, and
they carry the meaning of  breakfast .
Aftensmad  is similar, but with  aften , meaning 
evening , and the glue 
                                    -s-                                
. So this one is  dinner  or  supper .

You will meet many more such words during this course, and there is even
an entire skill dedicated to learning some more complicated ones further
down the tree.
If you're ever having trouble deciphering a particular Danish word, try
to see if you can't pick it apart in to smaller components, and
understand it that way. :)
Animals

Consonant Doubling

Recall the way nouns are put into the definite:


Indefinite article
Definite postfix


en
-en


et
-et


In some cases, however, it is necessary to double the ending consonant
of a word when forming the definite (and also the plurals). For example,
the word for  cat :

En kat  becomes  katten .

This occurs when the preceding vowel is short, and the word does not
already have two consonants succeeding it (in the same syllable). For
example, the word for  dog  does not double the last consonant:

En hund  simply becomes  hunden .

As a rule of thumb, Danish marks a short vowel by having two consonants
after it in the same syllable. However, unlike its siblings Swedish and
Norwegian, we do not double the same consonant if nothing follows it.
Hence, it is  kat  in Danish and not  katt  like in
Swedish/Norwegian, but  katten  in all of them.
This explanation might not mean much to you now, but hopefully it will
help you spell out words later. :)
Definite Articles

The Definite Form

As you may recall, Danish uses postfixing instead of marking the
definite form with an article. Simply put, the indefinite article is
appended to the end of the noun to mark definiteness: 
                                -en                              for
common gender and 
                                -et                              for
the neuter gender.

en mand  ( a man , common gender) adds 
                                    -en                                
 and becomes  manden  ( the man )
vand  ( water , neuter gender) adds 
                                    -et                                
 and becomes  vandet (the water) .

If the noun already ends with 
                                -e                              most
often only 
                                -n                              (for
common) or 
                                -t                              (for
neuter) is appended:

et æble  ( an apple , neuter gender) becomes 
æblet  ( the apple ).

Put in a table, it looks like this:


Indefinite article
Definite postfix


en
-en


et
-et


Consonant Doubling

In some cases, however, it is necessary to double the ending consonant
of a word when forming the definite (and also the plurals). For example,
the word for  cat :

En kat  becomes  katten .

This occurs when the preceding vowel is short, and the word does not
already have two consonants succeeding it (in the same syllable). For
example, the word for  dog  does not double the last consonant:

En hund  simply becomes  hunden .

As a rule of thumb, Danish marks a short vowel by having two consonants
after it in the same syllable. However, it does not double the same
consonant if nothing follows it. Hence, it is  kat in Danish and
not  katt  but  katten  in the definite form. Another example
is  æg  ( egg ), which in the definite form is  ægget  (
the egg ).
Plural Definite Nouns

In the plural definite form (such as  the cars ), nouns in Danish add 
                                -ne                              to
the plural form:

en kvinde  ( a woman ) has the plural  kvinder
 ( women ) and adds 
                                    -ne                                
 to become  kvinderne  ( the women ).
en dreng  ( a boy ) has the plural  drenge  (
boys ) and adds 
                                    -ne                                
 to become  drengene  ( the boys ).

This is independent from the grammatical gender of a noun, like the
plural form. Again, however, some nouns are irregular, for example:

en mand  ( a man ) has the plural  mænd  ( men
) but regains the lost 
                                    -e                                
 in the plural, adding 
                                    -ene                                
 to become  mændene  ( the men ).

The complete table including singular/plural and definite/indefinite
looks like this:


Singular,
indefinite
Singular,
definite
Plural,
indefinite
Plural,
definite


en
-en
-er, -e
-erne, -ene


et
-et
-er, -e
-erne, -ene


Plurals

Plural Nouns

Nouns in Danish form the plural by appending either 
                                -er                            
 (most commonly) or just 
                                -e                             :

en avis  ( a newspaper ) adds 
                                    -er                                
 and becomes  aviser ( newspapers).
en hund  ( a dog ) adds 
                                    -e                                
 and becomes  hunde  ( dogs ).

Again, if the words ends in an 
                                -e                              the
double-e is eliminated:

en pige  ( a girl ) adds 
                                    -er                                
 and eliminates the double-e to become  piger  ( girls ).

Whether a word uses 
                                -er                              or 
                                -e                              is
unrelated to its grammatical gender, and is something that must be
learned by heart. Furthermore, some nouns do not change at all in the
plural. These must also be learned by heart. There are, however, some
general guidelines:

The 
                                    -er                                
 postfix is the most common one. Nouns containing multiple syllables
usually take the -er ending.
Single syllabic words of the common gender (n-words) often use the 
                                    -e                                
 ending.
Short, single syllabic nouns of the neuter gender are most likely to
remain unchanged in the plural.

Source .
A small number of nouns change an inner vowel when forming the plural,
such as:

en and  ( a duck ) becomes  ænder  ( ducks ).
en bog  ( a book ) becomes  bøger  ( books ).

Typically these are transformations from  a  to  æ  or  o
 to  ø .
Another group of nouns, typically long words that end in 
                                -el                            
 and 
                                -en                            
 without stress on the last syllable, will drop that  e . Examples
include:

en kartoffel  ( a potato ) adds 
                                    -er                                
 but then drops the  e  before the  l to become  kartofler
 ( potatoes )
en tallerken  ( a plate ) adds 
                                    -er                                
 and drops the  e  before the  n  to become  tallerkner  (
plates ).

Consonant Doubling

Recall the way nouns are put into the definite:


Indefinite article
Definite postfix


en
-en


et
-et


In some cases, however, it is necessary to double the ending consonant
of a word when forming the plural (and also the definite). For example,
the word for  cat :

En kat  becomes  katte .

This occurs when the preceding vowel is short, and the word does not
already have two consonants succeeding it (in the same syllable). For
example, the word for  dog  does not double the last consonant:

En hund  simply becomes  hunde .

As a rule of thumb, Danish marks a short vowel by having two consonants
after it in the same syllable. However, it does not double the same
consonant if nothing follows it. Hence, it is  kat in Danish and
not  katt .
Words from English

A limited number of loan words from English retain their original,
English plural form:

En sandwich  ( a sandwich ) is simply  sandwiches
 in Danish.

However, it would not, in most cases, be wrong to form the plural using
the Danish structure, if you so wish. :)
Genitive Nouns

The Genitive Case

Forming the genitive in Danish is so simple you might think we're
kidding. But we're not! :) One simply adds -
                                s                              (no
apostrophe) to whatever one wishes to put in the genitive. For example:

Kvindens æble  which means  the woman's
apple .

To break it down: 
                                kvinde                            
 ( woman ) + 
                                -n                              (
the , or definite) + 
                                -s                              (
's , or genitive).
This is the only way of forming the genitive. There is no equivalent to
the English  of , such as in  the house of my parents . Instead the 
                                -s                              is
used every time, for all things:

Husets børn  which in English would be  the
children of the house , consisting of 
                                    hus                                
 ( house ) + 
                                    -et                                
 (definite) + 
                                    -s                                
 (genitive).

If the word that the 
                                -s                              is
appended to already ends in an s or an s-sound, an apostrophe is used
instead of an extra  s :

En gris' avis  meaning  A pig's newspaper  (gris
meaning pig).

Most often, the genitive is not even referred to as a grammatical case
at all, because it can really be appended to anything, and not just
nouns. Entire clauses can be put in the genitive, such as 
the-lady-at-the-back of-the-bus's hat  although some people consider
it bad language. But don't worry about that now!
If you know your vocabulary from the previous skills, this one should be
a breeze. :)
Possessive Pronouns

Possessive Pronouns and Adjectives

Danish does not distinguish between possessive adjectives ( my , 
your , etc) and possessive pronouns ( mine ,  yours , etc). The
same word is used in both cases, for example  min  for  my  or 
mine  here:

It is my newspaper  becomes  det er min avis .
The newspaper is mine  is  avisen er min .

However, possessive pronouns and adjectives for the first and second
person singular ( my ,  mine ,  your ,  yours  in English) must
be declined towards the thing being owned:
The full table of possessive pronouns/adjectives looks like this:


English
Danish


my & mine
min/mit/mine*


your & yours
din/dit/dine*


his, her & hers, its
hans, hendes, dens/dets


our & ours
vores


your & yours
jeres


their & theirs
deres


* Common/neuter/plural corresponding with the item being owned.
Note that the third person impersonal possessive pronoun ( its  in
English) declines with the grammatical gender of the item that is
owning, and not the item being owned:

Vi drikker kattens vand  becomes  vi drikker dens vand
 because  kat  is of the common gender (n-word). In English
this would be  we drink the cat's water  or  we drink its
water .
Vi spiser dyrets mad  becomes  vi spiser dets mad
 because  dyr  is of the neuter gender (t-word). In English,
this is  we eat the animal's food  or  we eat its food .

The possessive adjectives ( dens  or  dets ) in these
examples stay the same regardless of the grammatical gender of the noun
they modify. So it is:

Vi læser dyrets avis  ( we read the animal's newspaper )
into  vi læser dets avis  ( we read its newspaper ) even
though  avis  is common (an n-word).

This is contrary to how the first and second person possessive
adjectives behave:

Jeg læser din avis  ( I read your newspaper ). Here 
din  is used because  avis  is common (n-word).
Jeg spiser dit æble  ( I eat your apple ). Here it is 
dit  because  æble is neuter (t-word).

The declension table for  min  ( my ,  mine ) and  din
 ( your ,  yours ) looks as follows:


Grammatical gender
Singular
Plural


Common (n-word)
min/din
mine/dine


Neuter (t-word)
mit/dit
mine/dine


Reflexive Possessive Adjectives

As an added complication, Danish has a different set of pronouns when
something is being owned or belongs to by whomever is the subject of the
sentence. These behave like the possessive adjectives and pronouns for
the first and second person above, in that they decline corresponding to
the item being owned:


Grammatical gender
Singular
Plural


Common (n-word)
sin
sine


Neuter (t-word)
sit
sine


To better understand this concept in English, one can imagine adding the
word  own  after the possessive adjective:

Manden læser sin avis  means  the man reads his (own)
newspaper  while if the man was reading someone else's newspaper,
it would be  manden læser hans avis .

This extra dimension only comes into play for the third person singular,
and can be helpful in distinguishing to whom exactly an item belongs.
However, it takes a bit of getting used to. :) Try to determine if an
item belongs to the person performing the action in the sentence (the
grammatical subject) or someone else. This other person could also be
mentioned in the sentence, but does not carry out the action. As
mentioned above, you can perform a test in your head by inserting  own
 after the possessive adjective (in English): If it sounds weird, you
should not be using  sin/sit/sine .
Object Pronouns

Object Pronouns

Object pronouns are the targets of actions in sentences, and stand in
the place of the names of people or other objects. In English these are 
me ,  you ,  him ,  her ,  it ,  us,  and  them .
Now, some languages differentiate between direct object pronouns and
indirect object pronouns ( cough , Spanish,  cough ), but we Danes
like to keep, at least, object pronouns simple. So don’t get your heart
racing too fast already. ;)
This table shows the English object pronouns and their equivalents in
Danish:


English
Danish


me
mig


you
dig


him, her, it
ham, hende, den/det*


us
os


you (plural)
jer


them
dem


* This object pronoun changes to match the grammatical gender of the
word that the object pronoun replaces. For example:

I will take it down  when talking of  a frame  becomes 
jeg vil tage den ned  because  en ramme   (a frame) is
of the common gender.
I will take it down , speaking of  a map  becomes  jeg
vil tage det ned  because  et kort (a map)  is neuter.

Here is a few examples of how to use Danish object pronouns:

* I am dancing with them*  =  Jeg danser med dem .
The dog looks at her  =  Hunden ser på hende .
They give us the newspaper  =  De giver os avisen .

That was it! See, not that scary, huh? Just remember the table and
you'll do just fine in this lesson. ;) Good luck!
Clothing

How to Wear in Danish

In Danish, the most common way to express that someone is wearing
something is to say that they  have it on  them, literally. In
Danish,  to wear  becomes  at have på .
This conjugates to  har på  in the present tense. Let's see some
examples:

I wear shoes  becomes  jeg har sko på  where  sko
(shoes)  is the object being worn.
She is wearing a hat  becomes  hun har en hat på .
Here en hat  is the object being worn.

Notice how the object (what is being worn) is put between the actual
verb ( har ) and the preposition ( på ). This is true also
for many other phrasal verbs in Danish, some of which you will meet
later in this course.
You might already have realized that English has the same behavior: For
example in the sentence  I put my dress on  where  dress  (the
object) is put between  put  and  on .
While not a part of this particular skill, we can give you a sneak peak
and tell you that in Danish this particular sentence would be  jeg
tager min kjole på . So,  to put on  is  at tage på  in
Danish, and the object is put in the exact same location as it is in the
English sentence. Easy, huh?
One more thing to note is that in Danish it is possible to omit the
article before the thing you’re wearing. For instance:

Jeg har en kjole på  → literally  I have a dress on
 meaning  I am wearing a dress
Jeg har kjole på  → literally  I have dress on  meaning  I
am wearing a dress

Both options are correct, though, so don’t worry. ;) Most often the
second one (without article) is used, while the first one is chosen if
one wishes to add emphasis to the item being worn.
Since you already speak English, this part of Danish should not be a
problem for you at all! :) Good luck!
Present 1

Present Tense

Good news—the Danish present tense is very simple! You just have to add
an                                  -r                            
 to the infinitive form and voila! Your verb is now in the present
tense. Here is an example of how to conjugate three regular, Danish
verbs in the present tense:


Infinitive
English translation
Present tense


skrive
write
skriver


regne
rain
regner


arbejde
work
arbejder


The amazing thing is that this doesn’t change according to who is doing
the action like some of you may be used to (I’m looking at you
Frenchmen, Englishmen, Italians, Germans and basically the rest of the
world!). Look here:


At synge
To sing


jeg synger
I sing


du synger
you sing


han/hun/den/det synger
he/she/it sings


vi synger
we sing


I synger
you sing


de/De synger
they/you (formal) sing


Easy right? You should do just fine in this lesson. Don’t worry about
the irregular verbs, you just have to learn them by heart like in any
other language—okay, maybe a little worry is suitable. But hey! You’ve
already learned the irregular verb  to be ! There aren’t many
irregular verbs left prying on you out there—at least not in the present
tense. ;)
Kan godt lide

This expression does not have a literal translation in English, but it
means  to like . If one says  to like well  we're a bit closer to
the Danish structure.
The word  godt  is not super important for the meaning and could
be omitted, but it is nonetheless used a lot, and serves to enhance the
liking somewhat. So, if you want to say that you like food, you could
either say:

Jeg kan godt lide mad  (literally  I can well like food ) or
simply:
Jeg kan lide mad  (literally  I can like food ).

That was it—have fun and good luck with the present tense!
To Know and not to Know

In Danish, the verb  at vide  ( to know ) is transitive, meaning
it must always take an object. This means you cannot literally
translate  I know  or  I do not know  without adding what it is you
know or do not know. For the general case, such as when answering a
question,  det  is added:

Hvornår spiser vi?  ( When will we eat? ) to which you might
answer:
Det ved jeg ikke  (literally  it know I not ) or  Jeg ved
det ikke (literally  I know it not ).

There is a very slight difference between the two, emphasizing either
that you do not know  that  or that  you  don't know it. In most
cases, however, you can use either one.
Colors

Adjectives

Congratulations! You have now reached one of the slightly more difficult
parts of the Danish language: adjectives. Let us take a few moments to
go through how they work in Danish.
Adjectives decline according to the grammatical gender and number of the
noun that they modify. In Danish you would say  a green apple
 with the sentence  et grønt æble . You have already seen  et
æble , so let us discuss the middle part:  grønt .  Grøn
 is the Danish word for  green . When used to describe a neuter
gender noun such as  æblet , the adjective is suffixed with 
                                -t                              and
becomes  grønt .
There are three ways an adjective can be declined: 
                                -                             , 
                                -t                             , or 
                                -e                             . 
                                -                              is
used for common gender nouns, 
                                -t                              is
used for neuter gender nouns, and 
                                -e                              is
used for plural in both genders. This is also described in the following
table:


Common
Neuter


Singular
- (no change)


Plural
-e


There are irregular adjectives that are missing one or more of the
forms, such as  blå  ( blue ), which can only be:  blå
 or  blåt . Here  blå is used for both singular common and
both plural forms:  De blå bukser  ( The blue pants ). But also 
lilla  ( purple ) is irregular and only has one form used for
all nouns:  et lilla bord  ( a purple table ),  en lilla
fisk  ( a purple fish ), and  tre lilla stole  ( three
purple chairs ).
Adjectives and Definite Nouns

While nouns normally express definiteness using a postfix, this changes
to using an article if any adjectives (such as a color) is attached to
the noun.
If the color (or in general adjective) is used with a definite noun,
then it is put between the definite article and the noun:  En rød
bil  ( a red car ) becomes  den røde bil  ( the red car ).
In this case the adjective is declined the same way as for the plural
, no matter the grammatical number or gender of the noun.
As a reminder,  the car  without any adjectives is simply  bilen
, expressing the definite with the 
                                -en                            
 postfix and no article involved.
Color Variations

Variations of colors can also be formed by prefixing 
                                lyse-                            
 or 
                                mørke-                            
 to describe light and dark colors. As an example there is the color 
rød  ( red ), which can become  lyserød  ( light red
 or  pink ) or  mørkerød  ( dark red ).
With this in mind you should be able to master Danish colors. Good luck,
and see you in the next skill!
Questions

Questions

Welcome back! One very important thing to learn is how to ask questions.
Danish has the following standard question words, all starting with 
                                hv-                             :


Danish
English


hvad
what


hvor
where


hvordan
how


hvorfor
why


hvem
who


hvis
whose


hvornår
when


hvilken/hvilket/hvilke
which


Most of these are simply used like they would be used in English. The
equivalents of  which  ( hvilken ,  hvilket , and 
hvilke ) work just like adjectives. If you ask the question: 
Hvilke æbler er dine? ( which apples are yours? ), then it is
declined according to the gender and number of the noun . Here's a
quick table to illustrate this:


Common
Neuter
Plural


hvilken
hvilket
hvilke


Inversion

Inversion is when the normal order of words changes in certain
situations. In English inversion is used when asking questions, i.e. 
you are eating  becomes  are you eating?  when formulated as a
question. The same holds for Danish, for instance:

Han spiser et æble  ( he eats an apple ) becomes  Spiser
han et æble?  ( Is he eating an apple?  or  Does he eat an
apple? ).

In English, saying  eats he an apple?  (the literal translation)
sounds a bit queer, and one would of course involve the continuous form 
is eating  or add  do/does . However, no construction using 
                                -ing                            
 or  to do  exists in Danish, and as such the inversion helps to mark
the sentence as a question.
When using modal verbs (auxiliary verbs) in Danish it is only the modal
verb that is inverted:

Han vil spise et æble  ( he will eat an apple ) becomes 
vil han spise et æble?  ( will he eat an apple? ).

Here Danish and English are very similar. A key point to remember,
though, is that Danish does not use  to do  as an auxiliary in the way
English does, and as such questions will lose the  do/does  when
translated into Danish:  Do you swim? becomes  svømmer du? .
Note the inversion!
Inversion is used in other cases, too, but you'll pick those up on your
way further down the course. Hopefully this skill will allow you to pry
out all sorts of interesting information from Danes. Good luck, and
power on. :D
Prepositions 1

Prepositions

Prepositions in Danish are used similarly to prepositions in English.
They describe spatial or temporal relations, but can also mark syntactic
and semantic roles.
But what does that mean? It means that prepositions are very important
and are used very frequently in both Danish and English. Prepositions
can describe how you got a present, where you went, or even who you did
something for. Their uses are vast, but there are not that many
prepositions in neither Danish nor English.
In this skill we will introduce you to some of the prepositions. Please
remember that there is not a 1-to-1 correlation between Danish and
English prepositions! For example, a preposition such as  på  (in
most cases  on ), might sometimes mean  in : In Danish you
might say  jeg bor på slottet  which literally translated becomes 
I live on the castle . While it is indeed possible to live on
top of a castle, what you most likely wanted to say was  I live in
the castle .
But don't fret! Danish and English are very close languages, and
sometimes the same prepositions might be used in exactly same way in
both languages:

Æblet er på bordet , translates to  the apple is on the
table .

Prepositions are just one of those tiny annoying things that you really
need to learn, but can only acquire through constant practice and
exposure to the language.
Please do not get frustrated with our language because of this skill! It
really didn't mean to hurt you. Instead, enjoy all those words that make
English and Danish the best pals in the world, such as  efter  (
after ),  nær  ( near ), and  under  ( under ).
Conjunctions

Conjunctions

Not much to say here, really! Aren't you delighted? :) Conjunctions
(glue between parts of sentences) work pretty much the same in Danish as
in English.
So instead of tedious explanations, we'll just give you this nifty table
of conjunctions:


Danish
English


og
and


eller
or


fordi
because


men
but


når
when


mens
while


at
that


hvis
if (expressing conditionality)


om
if (expressing uncertainty)


To clear up any confusion about  hvis  versus  om , let's
grab two quick examples:

I eat if you eat  becomes  jeg spiser hvis du spiser .
I don't know if she eats  becomes  jeg ved ikke om hun
spiser .

If  becomes  hvis  in the first example because one clause is
conditionally dependent on the other one: I will only eat, if you will
also eat! In the second one, it becomes  om , expressing that
there's an a certain doubt surrounding the statement. The latter is
often used when asking for information about the state of things:

Do you know, if she is eating?  becomes  Ved du, om hun
spiser?

Dates and Time

Today, Tonight, & Tomorrow

In English there are words for today, tonight, tomorrow, and yesterday.
These words all become two words in Danish. For instance  i dag
 means  today . Here  dag  means  day , so the literal
translation is  in day . The same goes for  tomorrow  and 
yesterday , which are  i morgen  ( in morning ) and  i
går , respectively.
Tonight  is slightly different, because in Danish this could either
be  i aften  ( in evening ) or  i nat  ( in night ),
depending on what time you mean. The times for when to use which depends
on who you are talking to, but the general definition is that 
aften  is used for events occurring between 18:00 and 24:00
, while  nat  is from sunset to sunrise . Think of  evening
 versus  night  and you're good to go!
Because we want you to do well, here's a table for your viewing
pleasure:


Danish
English


i dag
today


i morgen
tomorrow


i går
yesterday


i aften
tonight, this evening


i nat
tonight, this night


The table is left uncapitalized on purpose in order to avoid confusion
as to whether something is generally spelled capitalized.
Periods of the Day

While English has the concepts of  morning ,  noon ,  afternoon , 
evening , and  night , Danish has an extra one for the period
between morning and noon. We call this one  formiddag  (
pre-noon ) just like  eftermiddag  is  afternoon . Take a look
at this table of the periods and points of the day used in everyday
Danish:


Danish
English
Approx. time


morgen
morning
6:00-10:00


formiddag
before noon
10:00-12:00


middag
noon
12:00


eftermiddag
afternoon
12:00-18:00


aften
evening, night
18:00-0:00


midnat
midnight
0:00


nat
night
0:00-6:00


Of course, individual people might have separate understandings of the
exact definitions of these time periods.
The Word "Om"

The tiny word  om  is a brave one, serving many purposes. We saw
it as a conjunction earlier, but it is used when talking about doing
some action during a time period. It can either be translated as  in
or  during  in this case. Thus:

He sleeps in the morning  would be  han sover om
morgenen.

Here it would be wrong to construct the sentence using  i
 (the literal  in ). In fact, we won't even show you the example
using  i . That's how wrong it is. ;)
Weekday

In Danish we have the notion of  a weekday , which is called  en
hverdag , which can also be translated as  an every day . This word
is usually used about workdays, which in Denmark are considered to be
Monday through Friday, even if some admirable people work Saturday and
Sunday. The word is not generally used about holidays even if these
might be located on a day that is between Monday and Friday.
Now we're already talking about days, take a look at this table we've
crafted especially for you:


Danish
English


mandag
Monday


tirsdag
Tuesday


onsdag
Wednesday


torsdag
Thursday


fredag
Friday


lørdag
Saturday


søndag
Sunday


The Danish words are not capitalized to make it even more obvious that
we do not do such silly things in Danish. Simple enough, hm? :)
Family (No Notes)

Occupations (No Notes)

Adjectives 1

Adjectives

Since we have already introduced how to work adjectives in the Colors
skill, let us just quickly recap what we learned earlier.
Adjectives decline according to the gender and number of the noun that
they modify. In Danish you would say  a big apple  with the sentence 
et stort æble . You have already seen  et æble , so let us
discuss the middle part:  stort .  Stor  is the Danish word
for  big (along with several other words). When used to describe a
neuter gender noun such as  æblet  it is then suffixed by 
                                -t                              and
becomes  stort .
There are three ways an adjective can be declined: 
                                -                             , 
                                -t                             , or 
                                -e                             . 
                                -                              is
used for common gender nouns, 
                                -t                              is
used for neuter gender nouns, and 
                                -e                              is
used for plural. This is also described in the following table:


Common
Neuter


Singular
-


Plural
-e


There are irregular adjectives that are missing one or more of the
forms, such as  beskidt  ( dirty ), which can only be 
beskidt  or  beskidte . Here  beskidt  is used for
both of the singular forms:  En beskidt abe  ( a dirty monkey ).
Other words, such as  moderne ( modern ) are irregular in a
different way and only have one form used for all nouns:  et moderne
bord  ( a modern table ).
Adjectives and Definite Nouns

While nouns normally express definiteness using a postfix, this changes
to using an article if any adjectives is attached to the noun.
If the adjective is used with a definite noun, then it is put between
the definite article and the noun:  En åben bil  ( an open car )
becomes  den åbne bi l  ( the open car ). In this case the
adjective is declined the same way as for the plural , no matter the
grammatical number or gender of the noun.
As a reminder,  the car  without any adjectives is simply  bilen
, expressing the definite with the 
                                -en                            
 postfix and no article involved.
I wish I could tell you which adjectives are irregular, but
unfortunately there are no real rules for that. Even with this in mind I
am sure you will do great. Good luck!
Present 2 (No Notes)

Adverbs

Adverbs

Adverbs in Danish are, like in English, a group consisting of a lot of
different words, with numerous functionalities. Adverbs modify or
describe verbs, adjectives, other adverbs, or entire sentences.
Word Order

Adverbs sometimes behave slightly different in Danish compared to
English. This is usually when they are used to describe a verb. Take the
example:

V i spiser generelt med vores bedstemor.

This becomes either  we generally eat with our grandmother  or  we
are generally eating with our grandmother . Notice how the verb ( eat
/ eating ) and adverb ( generally ) are on opposite sides of each
other in the Danish and English sentence.
When a sentence is started by an adverb describing the verb, then the
verb will follow immediately after. To explain this, let us consider
this example:

Generelt spiser jeg kød .

This example translates literally to  Generally eat I meat , however
in English  I  and  eat  would be switched giving the sentence 
generally I eat meat  or  generally I am eating meat .
Declension

Remember that adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs.
Therefore they do not decline to the noun of the sentence:

Hun spiser muligvis et æble  which means  she is possibly
eating an apple .

In fact, adverbs in Danish only decline to express comparative or
superlative, just like in English (e.g.  small ,  smaller , 
smallest ). But don't worry about these for now, you'll learn these
further down the tree. :)
From Adjective to Adverb

Just like an adjective in English can be converted to an adverb by
adding  -ly , so it is possible in Danish, in general by adding 
                                -t                             :

Normal  ( normal ) becomes  normalt  ( normally )
Fuldstændig  ( complete ) becomes  fuldstændigt  (
completely ).

This is not something you need to use actively in this skill, but you
might find it interesting to note these converted adjectives.
Now, go and have fun with this skill and see you in the next one!
Places (No Notes)

Objects (No Notes)

Animals 2 (No Notes)

People (No Notes)

Determiners

Determiners

Determiners modify words that determine the kind of reference a noun or
noun group has. In short, they describe things in further detail. Some
Danish determiners may be a little confusing, since you’ve already
learned the word—but with a different meaning! To help you out, we have
explained everything below.
Den and Det

You might recognize  den  (common gender) and  det  (neuter
gender) from sentences like:  Den spiser  =  It eats , but you
are about to learn something new!  Den  and  det  can also
mean  that as long as the determiner is accompanied by a noun. E.g.:

Den spiser  means  it eats .
Den mand spiser  means  that man eats .

De

At this point you’ve learned to combine  de  with a verb to form a
simple present tense:  De spiser  =  They eat . But if you
combine  de  with a plural noun, your sentence will get a whole
new meaning: 

De kjoler er smukke  =  Those dresses are beautiful . 
De mænd arbejder  =  Those men are working .

Disse

This determiner works the same way as de, but simply means  these
 instead.
Here is a table to make it "bell-clear" as we say in Danish:


English
Danish


this
denne/dette


that
den/det


these
disse


those
de


Anden and Andet

These two determiners means the same but change gender according to the
noun they describe. As you might have guessed  anden  is common
gender and  andet  is neuter gender.
Sådan and Sådanne

n English these would both be translated to  such , but be aware that
in Danish we differentiate between  sådan  (singularis) and 
sådanne  (pluralis). They have to match the noun they describe
too—but at least you don’t have to worry about gender with these two.
We hope that was helpful. Good luck!
Prepositions 2

Ad versus Af

Danish has two propositions that both translate roughly to the English 
of , and to make it worse they are also pronounced almost or exactly
the same. These are  ad  and  af .
Ad  is used to describe a direction  along ,  through , or 
towards something, and can often be eliminated in the English
translation. For example:

Jeg går ned ad gaden  means  I'm walking down (along) the
street .
Pigen kigger ud ad vinduet  means  the girl is looking out
(of) the window .
Hunden løber ind ad døren  means  the dog runs in (through)
the door .
De griner ad ham  means  they're laughing at him .

Af  on the other hand describes something originating  from
something, physical movement  away from  from something or a  cause
 of something. It also doubles as the word for  off . Here's a few
examples:

Du stiger af toget  means  you get off the train .
Stolen er lavet af træ  means  the chair is made of wood
.
Tag kjolen af  means  take the dress off .
Den er fuld af vand  means  it is full of water .

Even Danes get these two mixed up, with a clear tendency towards the
disappearance of  ad . Poor word. As mentioned, in spoken language
there is no distinction between these two, so don't worry too much about
it!
Now run along and learn some more prepositions!
Travel (No Notes)

Numbers

Numbers

Welcome back! It's now time for you to learn how to count. I know you
probably learned that quite a few years ago, but now it is time for you
to do it in Danish! Isn't that exciting?
Here's the list of numbers:


Danish
English


en, et
one


to
two


tre
three


fire
four


fem
five


seks
six


syv
seven


otte
eight


ni
nine


ti
ten


elleve
eleven


tolv
twelve


tretten
thirteen


fjorten
fourteen


femten
fifteen


seksten
sixteen


sytten
seventeen


atten
eighteen


nitten
nineteen


tyve
twenty


tredive
thirty


fyrre
fourty


halvtreds
fifty


tres
sixty


halvfjerds
seventy


firs
eighty


halvfems
ninety


hundred
hundred


The Logic Behind the Numbers

You are probably looking at the numbers, and thinking, there is
absolutely no system behind that madness. And I would almost agree,
except there is. You see, in Danish the number system is from a time
where people loved to count by twenties, or something like that.
The numbers from fifty and up are short forms of their original words,
so let us have a look at those:  halvtredsindstyve , 
tresindstyve ,  halvfjerdsindstyve ,  firsindstyve ,
and  halvfemsindstyve . These weird number using halv- come from a
line of old number words used to describe the base number minus a half,
for instance:  halvanden   (2-0.5 = 1.5) ,  halvtredje
 (3-0.5 = 2.5) ,  halvfjerde  (4-0.5 = 3.5) , and  halvfemte
 (5-0.5 = 4.5) . Today only  halvanden  is left as a standalone
word and is frequently used, while the others only appear in the
aforementioned weird long forms.
Right, let us now discuss how this helps us understand the number 
halvtreds : First we take the long form  halvtredsindstyve ,
which can be split into  halvtredje ,  sinde  ( times ),
and  tyve . Now this gives us "2.5 times 20", which is 50.
Here's the quick rundown for the rest of them:


Number
Long form
Split words
Math


tres
tresindstyve
tre sinde tyve
3 times 20


halvfjerds
halvfjerdsindstyve
halvfjerde sinde tyve
3.5 times 20


firs
firsindstyve
fire sinde tyve
4 time 20


halvfems
halvfemsindstyve
halvfemte sinde tyve
4.5 times 20


I hope this at least gives you an idea of why the Danish numbering works
like it does. :)
Counting from Twenty and Beyond!

In this course we are currently not teaching how to count to twenty-one
and such due to a limitation with Duolingo. But here is how you do it:
Taking a two digit number above twenty it is written as XY, where X is
the ten, and Y is the one. Let us take 34 as an example. Here X = 3
(thirty) and Y = 4 (four). In English you would say X-Y, so thirty-four.
But Danish does it in reverse (which is different from both Norwegian
and Swedish), so you would say Y- og -X. Let us consider our
example of 34 again, here X = 3 ( tredive ) and Y = 4 ( fire
), which gives us  fireogtredive  ( four-and-thirty ). Note that
in Danish numbers are treated like one word, where in English they are
hyphenated. Let us do another quick example: 57 would be  fifty-seven
 in English, but  syvoghalvtreds  in Danish.
More Things: Flere versus Mere

In English  more  can be used both to indicate a larger amount of
something and a larger count, or number, of things. In Danish, however,
we use  mere  for a amounts and  flere  for counts:

Vi har mere mad end jer  meaning  we have more food than
you , but:
Vi har flere biler end jer  meaning  we have more cars than
you .

The same goes for the superlative:

Vi har mest vand  meaning  we have the most water , but:
Vi har flest børn  meaning  we have the most kids .

You might have realized that these are the comparative and superlative
forms of  meget  and  mange :


English
Danish
Comperative
Superlative


much
meget
mere
mest


many
mange
flere
flest


Age

Now, I bet you want to know how to tell your age in Danish. Or maybe
not... But I will teach you how anyways!
It's simple. Use the verb  at være  (to be): " Jeg er tyve
år gammel ." You can also just forget about " gammel " and say:
" Jeg er tyve år ". If you change the pronoun nothing happens, so
just go for it!
You may encounter someone saying: " Jeg har en ven på tyve år. "
Wait, what? Is he sitting on top of twenty years? Actually, this is just
the clumsy Danish way of saying: "I have a twenty year old friend." But
don't worry about how to use this expression for now, you will learn
that later. ;-)
Phew! That was a lot of text and a lot of new information! Some practice
on this subject should do you good now. ;)
Past 1

Past Tense

Welcome to another verb skill! You have already been through a couple of
present tense skills. I cannot promise you that this skill will be just
as easy, since it is not as brain dead simple as adding a simple 
                                -er                              at
the end of the stem of the verb.
I promise you though that this skill is fairly simple still, since the
verb is not conjugated according to the gender or number but rather to
the verb itself. Seeing as English is probably simpler here, I'm sorry
for promising too much.
In Danish there are two regular conjugations in the past tense. The
conjugations are 
                                -ede                            
 and 
                                -te                             .
These are added to the stem of the verb.
Here are examples of verbs using the 
                                -ede                            
 conjugation:


Infinitive
English
Translation
Stem
Present
Tense
Past
Tense


lave
make
lav-
laver
lavede


elske
love
elsk-
elsker
elskede


lytte
listen
lyt-
lytter
lyttede


The last word  lytte  does not quite follow the pattern, but if
you forget the magically added second 
                                t                              then
it does. This magically appearing second 
                                t                              is
simply due to Danish consonant doubling, which is explained in previous
skills, but here is a quick recap:
It occurs when the preceding vowel is short and the word does not
already have two consonants succeeding it (in the same syllable). For
example, the word for  cat :

En kat  becomes  katte .

As a rule of thumb, Danish marks a short vowel by having two consonants
after it in the same syllable. However, it does not double the same
consonant if nothing follows it. Hence, it is  kat  in Danish and
not  katt .
Now let us take some examples of verbs using the 
                                -te                            
conjugation:


Infinitive
English
Translation
Stem
Present
Tense
Past
Tense


spise
eat
spis-
spiser
spiste


høre
hear
hør-
hører
hørte


tænke
think
tænk-
tænker
tænkte


Irregular Verbs

It would be too simple if all verbs were regular, so like in English we
also have irregular verbs when it comes to past tense. With these verbs
there are very few rules to help you, and the only surefire way to know
how it is conjugated is to look in a dictionary.
I hope this was not too scary. Have fun with this skill! :D
Infinitive 1

Infinitve Verbs

Welcome back to another round of verbs, your host this evening is
ever-friendly owl, Duolingo and Team Danish. We will guide you through
the infinitive form of verbs. The infinitive form is also called the 
at-form  in Danish, because at is placed in front of all verbs
when on their own, for instance:

at være  means  to be .

The word  at  ( to  when used with infinitive verbs) can easily
be confused with the word  og  ( and ) in speech, since they are
pronounced the same way by the certain members of the careless youth
today.
Modal Verbs

In Danish the infinitive form is usually preceded by the  at  word
except when used with modal verbs, such as  can ,  will , etc. An
example of this is:  Jeg kan gå  ( I can walk ), where 
kan  ( can ,  may , or  able to ) is a modal verb and 
gå  ( walk ) is the infinitive form of the verb. In this skill
we will introduce  kan  and  vil  ( will  or  want to )
as the only modal verbs for now. You will encounter many of these later,
and learn the grammar behind those. For now, do not worry too much about
it, and instead learn the way infinitive verbs work.
More examples of this are:

Jeg kan ikke gøre det  which means  I cannot do it .
Hun vil blive her  which means  she wants to stay here .

Infinitive as subject or object

The infinitives in Danish may be used as the subject or object of a
verb, just like in English. For instance:

At rejse er at leve  ( to travel is to live ), here both at
rejse  and at leve  are infinivites used as subject and
object, respectively.
Jeg elsker at spise æbler  ( I love to eat apples  or  I
love eating apples ).

Thank you for your time, and good luck with this skill. It can be a
little difficult to learn when to add the  at , but we believe in
you!
Education (No Notes)

Present 3 (No Notes)

Abstract Objects 1 (No Notes)

Past 2

Past Tense

In Danish there are two regular conjugations in the past tense. The
conjugations are 
                                -ede                            
 and 
                                -te                             .
These are added to the stem of the verb.
Here are examples of verbs using the 
                                -ede                            
 conjugation:


Infinitive
English
Translation
Stem
Present
Tense
Past
Tense


lave
make
lav-
laver
lavede


elske
love
elsk-
elsker
elskede


lytte
listen
lyt-
lytter
lyttede


The last word  lytte  does not quite follow the pattern, but if
you forget the magically added second 
                                t                              then
it does. This magically appearing second 
                                t                              is
simply due to Danish consonant doubling, which is explained in previous
skills, but here is a quick recap:
It occurs when the preceding vowel is short and the word does not
already have two consonants succeeding it (in the same syllable). For
example, the word for  cat :

En kat  becomes  katte .

As a rule of thumb, Danish marks a short vowel by having two consonants
after it in the same syllable. However, it does not double the same
consonant if nothing follows it. Hence, it is  kat  in Danish and
not  katt .
Now let us take some examples of verbs using the 
                                -te                            
conjugation:


Infinitive
English
Translation
Stem
Present
Tense
Past
Tense


spise
eat
spis-
spiser
spiste


høre
hear
hør-
hører
hørte


tænke
think
tænk-
tænker
tænkte


Irregular Verbs

It would be too simple if all verbs were regular, so like in English we
also have irregular verbs when it comes to past tense. With these verbs
there are very few rules to help you, and the only surefire way to know
how it is conjugated is to look in a dictionary.
Da versus Når: Past and Future

In English the conjunction  when  can be used to indicate how
something relates time-wise to something else:

I was tired when he arrived.
I will do it when she tells me to.

Notice how the first one describes something that occurred in the past,
while the other one describes something that have not yet come to pass.
You have already met the Danish conjunction  når , which
translates to  when . However,  når  is only used when speaking
of the present or the future. When describing the past, we use  da
instead:

Jeg spiser når jeg kan , the familiar one, meaning  I will
eat when I can  or  I eat when(ever) I can . But:
Jeg var træt da han kom  indicates something that has already
passed ( I was tired when he arrived ) so we use  da
 instead.

Enjoy another blast from the past!
Adjectives 2

Adjectives

Here's a recap of how to handle adjectives in Danish.
Adjectives decline according to the grammatical gender and number of the
noun that they modify. In Danish you would say  a big apple  with the
sentence  et stort æble . You have already seen  et æble ,
so let us discuss the middle part:  stort .  Stor  is the
Danish word for  big  (along with several other words). When used to
describe a neuter gender noun such as  æblet  it is then suffixed
by                                  -t                            
 and becomes  stort .
There are three ways an adjective can be declined: 
                                -                             , 
                                -t                             , or 
                                -e                             :


Common
Neuter


Singular
-


Plural
-e


There are irregular adjectives that are missing one or more of the
forms, such as  beskidt  ( dirty ), which only has that form for
both singulars, and then another for plural ( beskidte ). Other
words, such as  moderne  ( modern ) have one form used for
everything.
Adjectives and Definite Nouns

While nouns normally express definiteness using a postfix, this changes
to using an article if any adjectives is attached to the noun.
If the adjective is used with a definite noun, then it is put between
the definite article and the noun:  En åben bil  ( an
open car ) becomes  den åbne bil  ( the open car ). In
this case the adjective is declined the same way as for the plural, no
matter the grammatical number or gender of the noun.
As a reminder,  the car  without any adjectives is simply  bilen
, expressing the definite with the 
                                -en                            
 postfix and no article involved.
Comparative and Superlative

Just like English, adjectives in Danish can be declined to indicate a
degree This works exactly like in English, where you either postfix the
adjective with 
                                -ere                            
 (or 
                                -re                             )
for comparative and 
                                -st                            
 (or 
                                -est                             )
for superlative or put the words  mere  ( more ) or  mest
 ( most ) in front. The usual rules of consonant doubling and no
repetition of  e  applies.
We apologize deeply for the two forms of comparative and superlative
even in regular adjectives. There's is no clear way to determine which
one it is except for what "sounds best": The 
                                -ere                            
 and 
                                -st                             are
by far the most common ones, with 
                                -re                            
 being used for very common adjectives, and 
                                -est                            
 when the absence of  e  would make the word uncomfortable to
pronounce (for a Dane!). Here's a few pretty regular adjectives:


English
Danish
Comparative
Superlative


fast
hurtig
hurtigere
hurtigst


beautiful
smuk
smukkere
smukkest


cheap
billig
billigere
billigst


sharp
skarp
skarpere
skarpest


long
lang
længere
længst


new
ny
nyere
nyest


Note that, in the comparative and superlative the adjectives no longer
have any agreement with the grammatical gender of the noun the modify.
The superlative declines with an added 
                                -e                             when
put in the definite:

Vi har de hurtigste biler  meaning  we have the fastest
cars .

Unfortunately, there are a bunch of completely irregular adjectives,
just like in English. You'll get a chance to practice some of these in
this skill:


English
Danish
Comparative
Superlative


good
god
bedre
bedst


old
gammel
ældre
ældst


big
stor
større
størst


small
lille
mindre
mindst


young
ung
yngre
yngst


Mere  ( more ) and  mest  ( most ) work exactly like in
English when used to indicate the degree of an adjective:

Du er mere intelligent end mig  meaning  you are more
intelligent than me .
Hun er den mest intelligente i klassen  meaning  she is the
most intelligent in the class .

The general rule is that words of Latin or Greek origin take  mere
/ mest  and not postfix, while all other words can take either
one. Some people will frown upon not using the postfix form for
irregular adjectives, however.
More Things: Flere versus Mere

In English  more  can be used both to indicate a larger amount of
something and a larger count, or number, of things. In Danish, however,
we use  mere  for a amounts and  flere  for counts:

Vi har mere mad end jer  meaning  we have more food than
you , but:
Vi har flere biler end jer  meaning  we have more cars than
you .

The same goes for the superlative:

Vi har mest vand  meaning  we have the most water , but:
Vi har flest børn  meaning  we have the most kids .

You might have realized that these are the comparative and superlative
forms of  meget  and  mange :


English
Danish
Comparative
Superlative


much
meget
mere
mest


many
mange
flere
flest


Have fun!
Present Perfect

Present Perfect

Congrulations! You have approached some more interesting verb tenses.
This skill focuses on the present perfect tense. This tense is very
similar to English in that it (usually) uses  har  ( have  or 
has ) combined with the past participle of the verb. The verb then has
either 
                                -t                              or 
                                -et                            
 added to the stem form, depending on if it ends with an  e  or not.
For you grammar hawks out there, the present perfect is formed with 
at have  (or  at være ,  to be , see below) plus the past
participle.
Let us have a look at some example of this:

Jeg har læst bogen  meaning  I have read the book .
Jeg har boet i Danmark  meaning  I have lived in Denmark
.

The stem form of the two words are:  læs  and  bo
 respectively.
There is nothing too difficult about this tense when coming from
English, since the word order is basically identical between the two
languages even for questions, which previously caused some more complex
structures:

Har du læst bogen?  meaning  have you read the book?

Using "er"

In modern English, present perfect is almost exclusively done using 
have  or  has , but in Danish there are also verbs that use 
er (the present form of  at være ,  to be ) instead of 
har . However, these are few and in this skill only concerns 
blevet  ( become ) and  ankommet  ( arrived ).
An example being:

Jeg er blevet gammel  meaning  I have become old .

In general, words that use  er  have to do with moving, such as
walking, going, running, moving, arriving, and so on. For language
buffs, this will ring a bell as being a shared tendency across European
languages, even in older English.
Anyway, I am sure you will breeze right through this, and even if you do
not, then no harm done. I am here to teach you!
Danish Food

It Is All About the Food

Welcome to another relaxing skill in the world of the Danish course. We
promise that this skill will not be about all those pesky verbs and
their annoying rules. This skill will instead use what you have already
learned, and give you some Danish culture at the same time.
Some people love to cook food, and some people just love to eat it. In
this skill we will have a look at some food that is very common in
Danish culture, and add some food which was not introduced in the Food
skill you already had. The reason this skill is further down is so that
we can use it to rehearse with you guys some of the verb conjugations
you have already learned. See, there is a reason behind the madness!
Danish-only Food

In this skill you will encounter some words that are very difficult to
translate, or the translation will simply be literal, since the food
does not exist outside of Denmark and the Danish culture (at least not
to the same extent or in the same variation). Some of these are 
flæskesteg , which is a very common Danish dish that is basically
roasted pork. You can read more about this dish on 
Wikipedia . Not all of
these dishes will be described on the English Wikipedia, but if you
finish this course we can almost guarantee that you can read about them
on the Danish Wikipedia.
There are a lot more dishes than we can describe here, but go have fun
and learn about some of the Danish food!
Relative Pronouns

Relative Pronouns

Relative pronouns are used as relative clauses that modifies the main
clause of the main sentence. For instance:

Jeg har bøgerne som de taler om  meaning  I have the books
that they are talking about .

Here the word  som  is used to refer to the noun  bøgerne
 from the main sentence.
In Danish there are two very common relative pronouns:  som and 
der . Both can be used instead of  which  or  that , however
there is a simple rule:  som  can be used for both subject and
object, but  der  can only be used for objects.
The question words  hvem ,  hvilket ,  hvilken , and 
hvilke  can also be used as relative pronouns, however since they
are not essential and have already been presented, they are left out
from this skill.  Hvem  is used to refer to a person, while 
hvilket ,  hvilken , and  hvilke  are used for
non-human entities.
There are, however, two more words that are left in the skill: 
hvad  and  hvis , translating to  what  and  whose .


Danish
English


der/som
that/which


hvis
whose


hvem
who


hvilke/hvilket/hvilken
which


hvad
what


These are some words that will be fairly easy to translate since they
have a rather nice correlation with English. Also, if you're ever in
doubt whether to use  der  or  som , then  som  is the
safer bet. Now, good luck with the skill!
Indefinite Pronouns

Referring to the Indefinite

Welcome to something confusing!
A very common thing in Danish is to say something like  man må ikke
bande  ( one must not swear ), when talking about some general
person. Indefinite pronouns are used when referring to an unknown or
unspecified being, object, or place.
There are three difficult pronouns that it is key to understand the
difference between, since they are generally translated to almost the
same in English. These three words are:  man ,  én , and 
ens . The last word is slight different, since it is the
possessive indefinite pronoun, but let us wait with that. The apostrophe
on  én  is optional, and you might also encounter it (elsewhere)
written with a double-e instead ( een ). It merely serves to
differentiate it from the meaning of  a  or  one .
First we will look at the two words  man  and  én . 
Man  is only used as the subject, and can be translated to  one
 or  you . Which one it is translated to comes down to preference in
most cases, or which side of the Atlantic you were/one was born on. 
Én  can only be used as the object, and also translates to  one
 or  you . Therefore it is usually easy to translate to English, but
it requires a lot more thought going back.
Here are some examples:

Det er dejligt når andre tænker på én  ( It is nice when
others think of you ), here it is the object, since others think of
the pronoun, and thus it is  én .
Man spiser ikke heste  ( you do not eat horses  or  one
does not eat horses ), here it is the subject and thus it is 
man .

I hope this is pretty clear, because now we will extend it with the
word  ens . This is the possessive indefinite pronoun and
translates to  your  or  one's . This should be pretty straight
forward, but let us take an example:

Det er ikke altid godt når andre går ind i ens hjem  ( It is
not always good when others go into one's home ), the English
sentence can obviously use both  your  and  one's . I just
arbitrarily picked  one's  for this example.

I hope this is clear. There are not many indefinite pronouns worth
spending time on learning, so this is a very focused skill. Good luck!
Infinitive 2 (No Notes)

Medical (No Notes)

Modality

Modal Verbs

Modal verbs ( can ,  may ,  shall ,  will , etc.) are auxiliary,
meaning they modify the verb and express whether the action described is
seen as a plan, intention, prediction, permission, and so forth. In
Danish the modal verbs leave out the infinitive mark  at  when
combined with infinitive verbs:

Kan du høre hende synge?  meaning  can you hear her
sing?
Jeg kunne ikke høre hende synge  meaning  I could not hear
her sing .

Modal verbs are rather common in Danish, but most can be directly
translated to English. There are however some words that you should look
out for.
Words to Look For

Må
May  and  must  are often translated into the same word:  må .
Therefore the difference from English is described through the rest of
the sentence.

Må jeg spørge dig om noget?  meaning  may I ask you about
something?
Hun må være meget glad  meaning  she must be very happy
.

The past and conditional of  må  is  måtte :

Hun måtte ikke spise mere  meaning  she was not allowed to
eat any more .

Vil
The Danish word  vil  can express a want, an intention or demand,
or an opinion or prediction. Please note that even though English uses 
will  to indicate future this is not the case for Danish. In Danish it
is only used to describe future actions if you want to underline an
intention or opinion.

Han kommer senere  becomes  he will come later .

The past and conditional of  vil  is  ville :

Ville han komme herhen?  meaning  would he come over
here?

Skal
The past and conditional of  skal  is  skulle . This word
covers a lot of things, so let us list them:

A plan, system, suggestion, or agreement:  Du skulle prøve
det! meaning  you should try it!
Usually with the word nok: A promise or an assurance:  Du skal
nok blive god  meaning  you will be good (I assure you!)
The pattern behind a behavior:  Hvorfor skal du altid lytte?
meaning  why do you always have to listen?
A common opinion:  H.C. Andersen skulle være god  meaning 
Hans Christian Andersen should be good (I heard it from my
friends)
A feared scenario:  Jeg er bange at han en dag skal falde  (
I fear that he shall one day fall )

Please note that  skal  is also used for describing transport or
intent:

Jeg skal til Danmark  ( I am going to Denmark )
Jeg skal flyve til England  ( I will be flying to England )
Du skal hjem nu  meaning  you are going home now.
Vi skal ud at løbe  meaning  we are going to go running.

More Modal Verbs in One Phrase

In Danish you can combine modal verbs:

Du skal kunne tale dansk  meaning  you must be able to
speak Danish , where  kunne  becomes  be able to .

Right, this should get you started! Hopefully you are not too terrified
of Danish yet. We wish you the best of luck!
Past Perfect

Past Perfect

Well then, this skill is rather simple if you aced the Present Perfect,
and even if you did not then this is again very similar to the English
past perfect.
This tense uses the Danish word  havde  (from  at have , 
to have ) combined with the past participle of the verb. Therefore the
verb either has 
                                -t                              or 
                                -et                            
 added to the stem form of the word. This mostly depends on it ending
with an  e  or not.
Some examples:

Jeg havde læst bogen  meaning  I had read the book .
Jeg havde boet i Danmark  meaning  I had lived in
Denmark .

The stem form of the two words are:  læs  and  bo
 respectively.
There is nothing too difficult about this tense when coming from
English, since the word order is basically identical between the two
languages even for questions, which previously caused some more complex
structures:

Havde du læst bogen?  meaning  had you read the book?

Using "var"

As with present perfect, then past perfect is almost exclusive done
using  had , but in Danish there are also verbs that use  var
(past tense  at være ,  to be ) instead of  havde .
One example is:

Jeg var gået da du kom  meaning  I had left when you
arrived .

In general, words that use  var  have to do with moving, such as
walking, going, running, moving, arriving, and so on. Just like in the
present perfect.
So, basically this skill is present perfect all over again, with a
different auxiliary. Free repetition! Enjoy!
Abstract Objects 2 (No Notes)

Nature (No Notes)

Progressive Actions

Progressive Aspect

The progressive aspect describes something that is happening over an
extended period of time, e.g.:  I’m sleeping.  or  I was reading a
book . The progressive aspect is also often used when another action
interrupts an on-going event, e.g.:  I was eating when a ninja appeared
in the window.
In Danish we do not have a specific conjugation of the verb to express
this, as some other languages do. Instead we have a number of different
constructs used in expressing on-going events.
Står/Sidder/Ligger/Går og…
Danes often use either one of the verbs  står , sidder ,
ligger  and  går  together with the verb that describes the
thing we are also doing to express that we do it right now. For example:

Jeg sidder og læser .  = literally  I’m sitting and
reading .
Han står og snakker .  = literally  He’s standing and
talking .
De ligger og sover .  = literally  They’re lying and
sleeping .

You will often see that the word  lige  is added after the first
verb:

Jeg sidder lige og læser .
Han står lige og snakker .
De ligger lige og sover .

The adding of  lige  is sometimes unimportant, but it can also
change the meaning from something being done in the present to that
someone is busy doing something and must not be interrupted. You will
have to judge this by the situation. For example:

Må jeg spørge om noget?  =  May ask (about) something?

Nej, jeg sidder lige og læser .  =  No, I'm busy reading .

Hvad laver du?  =  What are you doing?

Jeg sidder lige og læser .  =  I'm reading .
I gang med, i færd med and at være ved noget...
The best translation for these three phrases would be either  in the
midst of  or to add 
                                -ing                              to
the verb stem. They all mean the same, but  i gang med  and  at
være ved noget  is used more often both in written and spoken
language whereas  i færd med  occurs less often—you are most
likely to find this phrase in Danish literature.
Here are a few examples to help you understand the phrases better:

Jeg er i gang med at lave mad  means either  I’m cooking
food or **  I’m in the midst of cooking food** .
Han var i færd med at undervise børnene  means either  he
was teaching the children  or  he was in the midst of teaching
the children.
Jeg er ved at tænde lysene  means either  I’m lighting the
candles  or  I’m in the midst of lighting the candles .

Please note that  at være ved at  is a little different from  i
gang med  and  i færd med —it can also mean  to be about to
something  as seen in these examples below:

Jeg er lige ved at forstå .  =  I’m just about to
understand .
Jeg er ved at være færdig .  =  I’m about to be done .

Være ved at blive
Means  is about to become ,  becoming  or  in the midst of
becoming— sometimes it can mean all three things at once!

Det er ved at blive mørkt .  =  It’s getting dark .
Det er lige ved at blive mørkt .  =  It’s just about to
become dark .
Han er ved at blive en mand .  =  He is becoming a man
 or  he is in the midst of becoming a man .
Vi er ved at blive gamle .  =  We are getting old .

Don’t worry too much about that weird little word  lige . There is
no accurate translation and the meaning will change according to the
sentence’s structure and the situation. This is one of the queer things
of the Danish language, that you can only come to understand with time.
This was just about everything you had to know about the Danish
progressive actions. We hope it wasn’t too confusing. Good luck with it!
Reflexive Pronouns

Reflexive Pronouns

Hey! You have made it this far? Impressive. We are at reflexive pronouns
and we are glad you are here with us.
Reflexive pronouns are pronouns that refer to a noun, adjective, adverb,
or pronoun that precedes or follows it within the same clause. That is
kinda confusing though, so let us just take an example:

Manden vasker sig  ( The man washes himself ).

In this example  sig  is the reflexive pronoun referring to the
man.
Let us get an overview with the following table:


Danish
English


mig
myself


dig
yourself


sig
himself/herself/itself


os
ourselves


jer
yourselves


sig
themselves


The Use of "Selv"

You may sometimes encounter the use of the reflexive pronoun followed by
the word  selv . This does not change the way it is translated,
and Danes may use it or not. It can be used to express an added
emphasis, if so desired.
We hope that this will be easy enough for you, or else we can hunt down
the people who control Danish. They sure have let it run wild.
Sports (No Notes)

Compound Nouns

Compound Nouns

Hey there! Here's a relaxing skill for you. The purpose of this skill is
to properly introduce you to compound nouns. Compound nouns are less
common in English than they are in Danish, since they are usually split
into separate words in English. In Danish there is in theory no limit to
how long a compound noun can be.
A compound noun always has a noun as the last part and is pronounced
with one strong stress. If a compound is spoken with one strong stress
and consists of two or more parts that are regular nouns, then the
compound is always written in one word, no matter how long the compound
noun might be:

telefonledning  ( telephone cord )
parkeringsbilletautomat  ( parking ticket machine )
studieopholdsforsikringspolice  ( study insurance policy )

Right, go have fun with this skill, and we will see you in the next one!
Passive Present

Passive Present

This skill will probably mess with your brain a little bit.
Passive voice is not that common in English, but it is very common in
Danish. Therefore we decided to teach you both passive present and
passive past. Passive past will come a little later, but be very much
like this. Passive voice is so common that if you do not know it, you
will probably be lost when you come to Denmark. Okay, just kidding, but
it is common!
Passive voice can be formed in two ways: 
                                -s                            
-passive, and  blive -passive. Let us have a look at both:

                                    -s                                
-passive is formed by adding 
                                    -s                                
 to the infinitive of a verb instead of the present form 
                                    -r                                
:  sælges  ( is sold  or  is being sold ) where the
present form is  sælger  ( sells ).
blive -passive is formed by the word  bliver  and the
perfect form of the verb:  bliver solgt  (same as above).

Here are some examples:

The 
                                    -s                                
-passive:  Smørret tages fra skabet  ( the butter is taken
from the cabinet ) can be made into  blive -passive in the
following way:  Smørret bliver taget fra skabet . Both
sentences are translated into the same in English in this case.
The 
                                    -s                                
-passive:  Historien fortælles igen og igen  ( the story is
told again and again ) becomes:  Historien bliver fortalt igen
og igen .

Please note that some verbs can be used in both forms, some verbs change
meaning slightly depending on the form, and some verbs can only exist in
one form. There are no real way to know except for looking it up.
Good luck with these. Be sure to ask questions if something is
confusing!
Arts (No Notes)

Communication (No Notes)

Politeness

Politeness

If you want to impress the old ladies in Denmark, you have to be
polite—and we are here to help you with that!
The formal form of addressing someone is not that common in Denmark
anymore. Some shop assistants and cashiers use this form, but while some
customers might appreciate this, others might find it a little unusual
and weird. Among young people it’s almost extinct, but it’s always
considered appropriate to address the elderly and higher-rankings in the
polite form.
De, Dem and Deres
When speaking to someone in a formal manner, you will have to use the
3rd person plural:  De/Dem  =  you  and  Deres  =  your
.
De  is used (instead of  du ) when talking directly to
someone:

De ser godt ud  =  You look good .
Hvem er De, frue?  =  Who are you, ma’am?

Dem  means the same as  De , but is either being controlled
by a preposition or is the object of a verb:

Hvad kan jeg gøre for Dem, hr.?  =  What can I do for you,
sir?
Kan jeg hjælpe Dem?  =  Can I help you?

Deres  means  your  or  yours . It is used when talking about
something belonging to the person you are addressing in a polite manner:

Er dette Deres?  =  Is this yours?
Skal jeg tage Deres jakke?  =  Shall I take your jacket?

Please note how the D is always capitalized in written language to
distinguish between plural and polite form.
Fru and frue
Fru  is used when talking to a married woman and  frue  to
either a married woman or to a woman above the age of around 30.
You can use  frue  independently of her last name:

Har De det godt, frue?  =  Are you well, ma’am?
Frue, De må ikke være her  =  Ma’am, you are not allowed to
be here .

Fru  requires you to mention the last name of the woman:

Fru Hansen er her ikke i dag .  =  Mrs. Hansen is not here
today .
Hr. og fru Aagaard bor på en gård .  =  Mr. and Mrs.
Aagaard live on a farm .

Frk. and frøken
En frøken  is  a miss  - an unmarried, young woman or girl. The
same rules applies here as explained above:  frk . requires you to
mention the last name of the young woman whereas  frøken  can be
used independently:

Frk. Jensen er meget smuk .  =  Miss Jensen is very
beautiful .
Er du en frøken eller frue?  =  Are you a miss or a
ma'am?

Hr. and herre
Hr . can be used both with and without the mention of last name.
It describes an adult man, married as well as unmarried:

Undskyld mig, hr., De glemte Deres pung .  =  Excuse me,
sir, you forgot your wallet .
Hr. Olsen smiler til sin kone .  =  Mr. Olsen smiles at his
wife .

Herre  is not a common form of addressing, but is often used when
talking of sports, clothing and toilets:

herretoilet  =  gentlemen's lavatory
herretøj  =  men’s clothing
herrefodbold  =  football for men .

Herre  can also mean the Lord (God) if the h is capitalized:

Du må bede Herren om tilgivelse .  =  You must ask the Lord
for forgiveness .

At last  herre  can mean sire or master as seen in these examples:

Katten er sin egen herre .  =  The cat is his own master
.
Lægen er her, herre .  =  The doctor is here, sire .

Please note, that this use of  herre  in the meaning of  sire
 only appears in literature and movies which takes place in old times.
It's not used in real, everyday life.
Bede om
At bede  means  to ask for  (and also  to pray , but that’s
not important right now), so if you want something, you will have to ask
like this:  Må jeg bede om vandet?  is literally  May I ask for
the water?  Same goes for actions, favors, help, ect:

Må jeg bede dig om en tjeneste?  =  May I ask you a
favor?
Må jeg bede om noget hjælp?  =  May I ask for some help?
Jeg må bede dig gå nu .  =  I will have to ask you to leave
now .

At være så venlig
It is always good to know this phrase:  Vil du være så venlig at…
 is literally  Would you be so kind to…  It functions as the English 
please , but is used at the beginning of the sentence:

Vil De være så venlig at flytte Dem lidt?  =  Would you
move yourself a little, please?
Vil du være så venlig at lave mad i aften?  =  Would you
make dinner tonight, please?

Pay attention to the verb: when following  være så venlig  it has
to be infinitive.
Tak for mad
If you should ever find yourself at a Danish dinnertable, you will have
to say  tak for mad  when you’ve finished your meal. It literally
means:  thanks for food . The answer to this will almost always be: 
velbekomme . The English language does not have anything
corresponding, but it functions as a kind of  you’re welcome .
That was it! You are now armed to the teeth with politeness. This skill
should not be too difficult – good luck with it!
Present Participle

The Limited Present Participle

In English, the present participle has a wide array of applications,
such as forming the progressive ( I am eating ), forming adjective
phrases ( You are sitting at the table ), or for adverbial clauses
with the subject implied by the main clause ( Looking at the stack of
papers, I am overwhelmed ). In English, it is formed by adding 
                                -ing                              to
the stem.
In Danish, however, the usage is much more limited. It is only used to
convert a verb into an adjective, and sometimes an adverb. It is formed
by adding 
                                -ende                            
 to the verb stem.
For example,  to smile  is  at smile  (easy, huh?). The stem
here is 
                                smil-                             ,
to which we add 
                                -ende                             :

Den smilende mand spiser en is  meaning  the smiling
man is eating ice cream .

Here the verb is used as an adjective to describe a property of a noun.
Another example could be:

Jeg hader skrigende børn  meaning  I hate screaming
children .

Imagine you have a younger sibling who is just now returning from the
playground, having hurt himself enough to cry a bit. The verb is  at
græde  with the stem being 
                                græd-                             .
So we might describe the situation:

Barnet kom grædende ind  where we use the verb in the present
participle to describe the manner in which the child came in:  The
child came crying in.

More naturally, perhaps, in English one would say  the child came in,
crying . Notice how the present participle is free to move around in
English, while it is more locked down in the adverb position in Danish.
The present participle can also be used descriptively, like any other
adjective:

Hun er en smilende person . Here the verb is smile which we
saw before, so this translates to  she is a smiling person  (i.e.
someone who smiles often).
Du er krævende  from  kræve  ( demand ) hence  you
are demanding (i.e. a demanding person).
Skrigende børn er irriterende . Double up! Here we have 
at skrige and  at irritere , in English  to
scream  and  to annoy . Converting to adjectives we get: 
Screaming children are annoying .

While it can be tempting to try to translate, for instance, the
progressive ( I am eating ) using the present participle just the same
in Danish, this would be wrong! Don't do it!
In summary, present participle only for adjective and adverb
purposes. :)
Imperative

Imperative

So, you may be wondering why we have not been more demanding. I mean in
the sense of having sentences such as: "Go away!" and such. This is
because it requires a special mood of the verb in Danish, different from
the infinitive. However, this mood is equivalent to the stem of the
word. So it's really not that hard. :)
Imperative is also called  bydeform  in Danish ( bidding-form
roughly translated), because it is used to issue commands and biddings.
So that we know that, why not have a look how it actually works?


Infinite
Stem
Imperative
English


at sove
sov-
sov
sleep


at synge
syng-
syng
sing


at betale
betal-
betal
pay


at lytte
lyt-
lyt
listen


at fortælle
fortæl-
fortæl
tell


It is pretty simple, since it just has the form of the stem of the word
which we've already used in other skills to form other tenses.
To find the stem, or imperative, one can just strip off any  e -s that
you can (and any double consonants like in the table above), and then
you have your word. If the word is so short that removing the  e
 leaves it with one letter or only consonants, then you went too far.
Now you can say things like:

Gå væk!  ( Go away! )
Se her!  ( Look here! )
Tal nu eller ti for evigt!  ( Speak now or forever hold your
peace )

Okay that last one was a phrase that is probably very situational.
Anyway, have fun issuing commands!
Politics (No Notes)

Future

The Unmarked Future

Welcome to the skill that is not recognized by many Danes in daily
speech: The future.
This is because Danish usually has an unmarked future, meaning it uses
the present tense as future. Future in Danish can also be formed with
the use of modals such as  vil  ( want ) or  skal  (
must  or  shall ) followed by the infinitive. Lastly future can be
formed with  blive  ( become ), which in this case will have the
meaning  will be .

Examples of using the present tense:  Jeg rejser i morgen  (
I will travel tomorrow ) and  jeg kommer senere  ( I will
come later ).
Examples of using modals:  Jeg skal svømme i morgen  ( I am
going to swim tomorrow ) and  j eg vil drikke tre glas vand i
næste uge  ( I will drink three glasses of water next week ).
Lastly we have future using  blive :  Bliver det nogensinde
godt igen?  ( Will it ever become good again? )

There is really nothing else to it. Either Danes do not care about the
future, or we care so much that it is a very incorporated part of our
language. Who knows? Don't look at us.
Passive Past

Passive Past

This skill is so similar to the passive present that this might seem
very alike. However, the ways of forming passive are slightly different
in the past, even though they are called the same things. This skill is
again one of the most difficult skills to grasp coming from English,
since passive is not that common as it is in Danish. Passive voice is
very common in Danish.
Passive voice can be formed in two ways: 
                                -s                            
-passive, and  blive -passive. Let us have a look at both:

                                    -s                                
-passive is formed by adding 
                                    -s                                
 to the active form of a verb (
                                    -te                                
or 
                                    -ede                                
):  solgtes  ( was sold  or  was being sold ) where the
active form is  solgte  ( sold ).
blive-passive is formed by the word blev and the perfect form of the
verb: blev solgt (same as above).

Here are some examples:

The 
                                    -s                                
-passive:  Dørene åbnedes for to timer siden  ( the doors
were opened two hours ago ) can be made into  blive -passive
in the following way:  Dørene blev åbnet for to timer siden .
Both sentences are translated into the same in English in this case.
The 
                                    -s                                
-passive:  Loven ændredes efter mange år med krig  ( the law
was changed after many years with war ) becomes:  Loven blev
ændret efter mange år med krig .

Please note that some verbs can be used in both forms, some verbs change
meaning slightly depending on the form, and some verbs can only be exist
in one form. There are no real way to know except for looking it up.
Good luck with these! Please do not hesitate to ask questions, this is
one of the most confusing areas of learning Danish.
Business (No Notes)

Kitchen (No Notes)

Attributes (No Notes)

Future Perfect

The Nonexistent Conjugation

Future perfect is a conjugation that is not strictly found in Danish.
Therefore this skill is a little... strange. However, we want to still
give you the option to speak about something that will have happened in
the future, but haven't happened yet, because that is just way cooler.
In Danish future perfect is be formed by using present perfect about an
action that is not happening now, but will happen in the future. This is
a bit confusing, so let us take some examples:

Jeg har fundet mine nøgler når du kommer  ( I will have found
my keys when you arrive ), in this sentence the future comes
through the use of  when you arrive .
Manden har spist sin mad i morgen aften  ( the man will have
eaten his food tomorrow evening ), again the sentence becomes
future due to the use of  tomorrow evening .

Notices how the sentences can quickly become present perfect if we
remove the future part:

Jeg har fundet mine nøgler  meaning  I have found my keys
.
Manden har spist sin mad  meaning  the man has eaten his
food .

If you want to be nit-picky about it, the perfect future can be formed
using  vil have  ( will have ) just like in English, but it
sounds rather strange.
As you can see Danish does not use future perfect and it is also not
that common in colloquial Danish. However, we understand that you guys
come from a different language and thus may love this conjugation,
therefore we will be teaching you guys this!
Aren't we nice?
Science (No Notes)

Events (No Notes)

Conditional Perfect

The What-If

Ever wanted to say that you would have gotten away with something if it
had not been for those meddling kids? Well now you can do so in Danish.
After this skill, anyway.
So the above paragraph already uses conditional perfect. It is a
grammatical construction that uses the conditional mood combined with
the perfect aspect. A typical phrasing in English would be:  would
have  + perfect tense of the verb, e.g.  would have gotten . The same
goes for Danish, however it is fairly common to use the modal verbs: 
kunne ,  ville ,  skulle , and then  have . Here
are some examples.

Jeg kunne have købt en bil, hvis jeg havde haft nok penge  (
I could have bought a car, if I had had enough money ).
Det ville have ændret mit liv, hvis vi havde vundet  ( It
would have changed my life, if we had won ).

There are several more, but you get the idea: modal verb +  have +
perfect tense of verb. This is very similar to English.
Now go ace this skill and we will see you in the next one!
Spiritual (No Notes)

Danish Culture (No Notes)

H.C. Andersen

The Secret Bonus Skill

First of all: congratulations for reaching the bottom of the tree! You
made it through 68 skills so far! As a little “present” we made this
secret bonus skill for you. Maybe you’ve seen it down there in the
bottom wondering what “Once Upon” was supposed to mean. Wait no longer!
We are happy to reveal that this is a skill dedicated to one of
Denmark’s most beloved authors, the world famous H.C. Andersen.
These lessons will focus on some of his most famous fairy tales such as
The Little Mermaid, The Ugly Duckling, The Snow Queen, The Nightingale
and many more! And who knows? Maybe you’re able to read them all in
Danish now!
English	Danish
I	jeg
you	du
he, she, it	han, hun, den/det*
we	vi
you (plural)	I**
they	de
English	Danish
I eat	jeg spiser
you eat	du spiser
he, she, it eats	han, hun, den/det spiser
we eat	vi spiser
you (plural) eat	I spiser
they eat	de spiser
English	Danish
I	jeg
you	du
he, she, it	han, hun, den/det
we	vi
you (plural)	I*
they	de
English	Danish
my & mine	min/mit/mine*
your & yours	din/dit/dine*
his, her & hers, its	hans, hendes, dens/dets
our & ours	vores
your & yours	jeres
their & theirs	deres
Grammatical gender	Singular	Plural
Common (n-word)	min/din	mine/dine
Neuter (t-word)	mit/dit	mine/dine
English	Danish
me	mig
you	dig
him, her, it	ham, hende, den/det*
us	os
you (plural)	jer
them	dem
At synge	To sing
jeg synger	I sing
du synger	you sing
han/hun/den/det synger	he/she/it sings
vi synger	we sing
I synger	you sing
de/De synger	they/you (formal) sing
Danish	English
hvad	what
hvor	where
hvordan	how
hvorfor	why
hvem	who
hvis	whose
hvornår	when
hvilken/hvilket/hvilke	which
Danish	English
og	and
eller	or
fordi	because
men	but
når	when
mens	while
at	that
hvis	if (expressing conditionality)
om	if (expressing uncertainty)
Danish	English
i dag	today
i morgen	tomorrow
i går	yesterday
i aften	tonight, this evening
i nat	tonight, this night