Talk:Danish grammar

Subjunctive
The part about the Danish moods is confusing, misguiding, and just plain wrong. When it comes to verbal moods, Danish is pretty similar to English -- except that Danish does NOT have a subjunctive, the way English has in two instances of one word ("I were", and "he were" is subjunctive in English -- nothing similar in Danish exists whatsoever.)

To describe Danish as having both an indicative and a subjunctive that just happen to be identical in all instances, is, if not pure nonsense, then at least a major spitting on Occam's razor. You might as well say that English has three numbers: The singular, the dual, and the plural; but the dual just happens to always be the same as the the plural. At best, it's nonsense, at worst obfuscation. Bantaar (talk) 02:37, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Danish has an (antiquated) subjunctive using auxiliary verbs as "måtte". The previous morphological subjunctive has gone completely out of use but exist in older texts like those by H.C.Andersen and Søren Kiergaard - that might be worth supplying. However I do think that the section as it is is correct it just uses a lot of space on explaning those two set phrases "leve kongen" etc. I don't see it as obfuscating - but it does show a strong lack of sources which makes it impossible to judge whether the descriptions of relics of the subjunctive mood are Original Research or not.·Maunus· ƛ · 02:42, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I just rewrote the whole thing before reading your reply. I started out making a few changes, and it seemed to get more and more opaque. So I rewrote it. I think my new version is more true. It's certainly simpler. There's a lot more to be said, of course, as I've restricted myself to the MORPHOLOGY -- which is quite conventional for articles of this kind. Bantaar (talk) 04:58, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

AND - yes, I've restricted my viewpoint to current time. It's certainly true that in the past, things were different. The further back, the more different. I didn't think of this, really -- people who look up Danish may be more interested in Kierkegaard than the people there today. Hmmm... Bantaar (talk) 05:03, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

I've added an example to illustrate how hypothetical statements are expressed in Danish, as we have in the past had some confusion about the existence of a subjunctive. It may be argued that there's a periphrastic subjunctive, which the example illustrates. I think it might be overkill to give the complete set of rules here? (This key example is already complicated enough and maybe even takes up too much space?) Bantaar (talk) 12:30, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Syntax
This article contains no information in syntax at all - a quite important part of Danish grammar.·Maunus· ƛ · 20:55, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Expression of the future
Can someone refresh my memory as to how the future is expressed in Danish? This probably should go in the article, but I'd also like to put a short Danish section in the article Future tense. Am I right that "vil" never expresses futurity, but rather the modality of desire? Is "skal" always a future marker, or does it have modal implications as well? Is anything else used for the future? Is the simple present used more frequently than "skal" for the future? 75.183.96.242 (talk) 15:47, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Difficult question. "Vil" can be used for future. Usually, but not always, with an impersonal subject. "Det vil aldrig ske", that will never happen. But "Det skal ej ske!", that shall not happen. The former is a prediction, the latter a promise.

The basic meaning of "skal" is must.

"Skal" is often used where English uses "going to". "Hvad skal du i aften?" what shall you tonight, that is what are you going to do tonight. Or "jeg skal besøge mine forældre i weekenden", I am going to visit my parents this weekend. "Skal du hjem nu?" are you going home now?

I am not capable of giving any rules. The more I think about it, the more confused I become. Compare these four sentenses. Say a man is arriving for a meeting. "Hentes" and "blive hentet" both means "be picked up",

"Han vil hentes": he wants to be picked up. "Han skal hentes": he must be picked up. "Han vil blive hentet": he will be picked up (it is already arranged, or at least is a given that it will be) "Han skal blive hentet": he will be picked up (I promise)

Using the present is more common than using "vil" or "skal". You can also use the word "blive", meaning become, as a kind of futire of to be.

Jeg skal til fødselsdag i morgen: I am going to a birthday tomorrow. Det bliver sjovt: that will be fun. Vi bliver 15: we will be 15 (that is 15 participants in the party) Han bliver 40: he becomes 40 (it is a 40 year birthday)

--Klausok (talk) 20:13, 7 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the detailed and very helpful answer. I'll use it in the article Future tense. 75.183.96.242 (talk) 16:32, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Declension
The section as it stands now does not make much sense. There are several ways of describing the null plural ending. You may say that it is a rule that neuter monosylabics use this ending, and that other words do not. If so, this is a rule with many exceptions. This is how the tables are made. "Hus", "våben" and "sten" are considered irregular.

Or you may say that there is no rule, but a strong tendency that neuter monosyllabics, and only neuter monosyllabics, use the null ending. This is what the text assumes, though it does not say so explicitly.

Or most of the text. The text mentions the "wrong" regular ending. Since no rule is mentioned, how can an ending be wrong? --Klausok (talk) 07:22, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

I have removed this example:

velankomne til Kastrup Lufthavn gik de næste par timer med indcheckning, "having arrived to Copenhagen Airport well, the next couple hours were spent in the check-in".''

for two reasons. The Danish sentence is a rather comical error. A quite common error, but still an error. It was not the next couple of hours which arrived. Also, "arrived well" is unidiomatic in English.--Klausok (talk) 06:22, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Verbs
Does the form "verbal noun" belong under verbs? Surely a "verbal noun" is a noun, not a verb? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.233.234.254 (talk) 12:43, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, the verbal noun is a noun, not a verbal form. So please remove it.

Will the author or someone else please clarify the counting of verb forms? In the tables I count more than the nine verb forms that are announced: 1. (at) vente; 2. (at) ventes; 3. venten; 4. ventende; 5. ventet; 6. venter; 7. ventes / bliver ventet; 8. ventede; 9. ventedes / blev ventet; 10. vent; 11. (~6.) venter (imperative plural) [Ingeborg Stemann, 1965, Danish; a practical reader] does not seem to give this form however, but if it counts, maybe the next form counts as well); 12. (~7.) bliver ventet. The book mentioned also gives: 13. har ventet; 14. havde ventet; 15. vil / skal vente (future); 16. ville / skulle vente (conditional). Redav (talk) 09:43, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

If you include the obsolete plural imperative (which was identical to the present, venter), you should also include the obsolete plural present (which was identical to the infinitive, vente).--Klausok (talk) 11:14, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

I can see my text invites comments on even more verb forms. My intended main point was that I like to see a coherent text that a) defines the way of counting, and b) than counts according to that definition, rather than leaving the reader wonder.Redav (talk) 14:11, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Adjectives
I think the text as currently presented is wrong:

‘Only words ending in a consonant take -e.’

Counterexample: fri - frie — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.139.82.82 (talk) 00:10, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
 * There are two exceptions to this rule, fri and ny. In both cases the -e is optional.--Klausok (talk) 04:43, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Comparisons with German
I'm German myself, so it does flatter me that the article constantly compares Danish to German. However, I think these comparisons are often unnecessary, especially when it says, as it does several times, "contrary to German, Danish [...]". I think comparisons with German should only be used when 1.) a particular grammatical topic involves a certain degree of complication rather than just a simple easy fact (like: there are many verbs in -ere, cf. German -ieren), and when 2.) German and Danish grammar are more or less the same concerning such a topic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.206.135.238 (talk) 20:53, 11 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Honestly, I only see a couple of instances where the comparison with German seems a bit gratuitous. In the other cases, it's taken as a meaningful representative of Germanic languages (probably with reason) or is part of a series of examples (together with, say, English or French) where similarities exist. I will remove the seemingly gratuitous instances. LjL (talk) 20:58, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

glad
The adjective "glad" ends in a consonant, but doesn't get the -t in the neuter form. Is this another exception? CodeCat (talk) 21:29, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Personally I would always give it a -t in the neuter form, both in speech and writing, and I didnt realize this was considered "incorrect" until I checked it just now at ordnet.dk.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 07:11, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * It does seem to be an exception. E.g. flad, hed and sød do get -t. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Klausok (talk • contribs)
 * I am talking to my danish linguist friends and they say it is a phonologically conditioned exception because the word lacks stød - (flad, hed, lad, and sød have stød and take t). My own usage (which I found first attested in Erik Eriksen Pontoppiddan's Grammatica Danica from 1668) is probably an innovation by analogy with the adjectives with stød.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 16:52, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * An interesting explanation. Does that account for some of the other t-less adjectives? Also, it brings up a new question: why is there no stød? CodeCat (talk) 18:55, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * The lack of stød is just a question of the word's history the accent it carried in old norse was the one that did not produce stød in Danish. the same rule does account for fremmed which I incidentally also do use with -t.07:27, 17 September 2016 (UTC)·maunus · snunɐɯ·
 * It doesn't take a -t form because gladt sounds like glat (compare flad and fladt), so it would be confusing. Carewolf (talk) 09:21, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Btw, when would you ever use glad in the neuter form? I can't make it sound right with any neuter words, I would always rephrase it so avoid using glad on a t-word. Carewolf (talk) 09:23, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Et glad(t) barn, et glad(t) hjerte, et glad(t) fodboldhold etc. And no gladt doesnt sound like glat it sounds like, it doesnt rhyme with fladt (flad has stød, glad doesnt). Another word that doesn't take -t officially but which some including me pronounce with t in neuter is ræd "scared" and rædt for me rhymes with gladt.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 12:25, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * In many dialects they do sound the same. Besides they do technically rhyme, because stød like emphasis is not used when singing. Carewolf (talk) 14:10, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I have never heard any dialects that have the "glat" for gladt (because apparently most people say "glad" also in neuter and "gladt" is a non-standard form introduced by analogy. Eriksen Pontoppiddan writing in 1668 seems to have pronounced them differently as well.) And sure people can use them as near-rhymes in a song, but they do not "technically" rhyme since they have phonologically different endings.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 14:18, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

Misconceptions about the letter T
It is a general misconception that mid/end t's officially are pronounced as hard d's in danish. Officially t's are promounced as t's.

With that said: Many danes tend to pronounce t's as d's, either hard or soft. (I will use the following to denote pronunciation: T/t = T ; D/d = Hard D ; Ð/ð = Soft D)

We can take a look at the word "Teltet" = the tent The official pronunciation is "Teltet"

The first T is always pronouced T The second T is pronounced as either T or D The third T is pronounced as either T, D or Ð.

Which gives you the following six possible pronunciations: Teltet, Telted , Telteð, Teldet , Telded , Teldeð

Though only the first is the official pronunciation, all of them are fully accepted

The second misconception is the -t on adverbs and adjectives

There are a few words that are unmodified no matter what: words whose base form ends with a t e.g.: flot(handsome/beautyful) mæt(saturated) beskidt(dirty) most words whose base form ends in a wovel e.g. lille(small) sky(shy) bly(modest)

Otherwise the general rule is: The -t is always added to adverbs The -t is never added to adjectives of common gender nouns The -t is optional (but mostly used) for adjectives of neuter gender nouns.

notice that some nouns have different meanings depending on their gender, and some even several meanings within each gender: e.g "fyr" en fyr : a guy, a neutered cat et fyr : a boiler, a lighthouse

.. while other words can be both common or neuter: e.g. "ler"(clay) and "katalog"(catalog)

Lerura (talk) 02:42, 3 March 2017 (UTC)


 * "Official" pronunciation? #1, 2, 3, 4 all seem affected to me. Do you mean to say that the people surrounding you pronounce aspirated stops in non-syllable-initial position in spontaneous speech? PS can you provide attestation for your claim that fyr can mean "neutered cat"? PPS if you want to nuance the bit on adverbalization, you might also want to discuss adverbs ending in -ig(t). PPPS demonymer og sprognavne skrives med stort begyndelsesbogstav på engelsk.__Gamren (talk) 11:02, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Why this needless brutality?
The reflexive pronoun is used when the object or possessive is identical to the grammatical subject of the sentence: han slog sin kone ihjel "he killed his (own) wife" ~ han slog hans kone ihjel "he killed his (somebody else's) wife".

This grammatical example would be just as good (actually better) if we made the sentence about kissing, not killing his own wife or somebody else's wife.

I know it's just an example of grammar, but really, isn't the world not cruel enough as it is?

2A02:AA7:460E:256C:AC9C:242E:47E7:92AC (talk) 12:48, 17 March 2024 (UTC)


 * You're welcome to change the example! //Replayful (talk &#124; contribs) 13:18, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, please try to use examples that we really might hear in everyday life. Doric Loon (talk) 08:41, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Someone did something. Yay! //Replayful (talk &#124; contribs) 17:59, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
 * (though I'm somewhat wondering if anyone can come up with an example that doesn't imply potential cheating on your wife...) //Replayful (talk &#124; contribs) 08:59, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
 * The classic example used in Denmark is "Han gik hjem med sin kone" (We went home with his wife) "Han gik hjem med hans kone" (He went home with somebody else's wife). Still controversial, but less brutal. Carewolf (talk) 10:55, 12 April 2024 (UTC)