Learn the basic rules of Danish sentence structure
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Intro |
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| Antoni: How are sentences structured in Danish? |
| Anna Juul: And are the rules rigid? |
| Antoni: At DanishClass101.com, we hear these questions often. Consider the following situation: Ben Lee, a foreign-exchange student, is in a music shop with a friend, Nanna Nielsen. He sees a poster and recognizes the artist. He says, "I know him; it's Kygo." |
| Ben: Jeg kender ham, det er Kygo. |
| Dialogue |
| Ben: Jeg kender ham, det er Kygo. |
| Nanna: Jeg kender ham også. |
| Antoni: Once more with the English translation. |
| Ben: Jeg kender ham, det er Kygo. |
| Antoni: "I know him; it's Kygo." |
| Nanna: Jeg kender ham også. |
| Antoni: "I know him too." |
Lesson focus |
| Antoni: In this lesson, we will be looking at how sentences are structured in Danish. Danish word order rules are quite rigid, but this is a good thing for a student of Danish because it means you don’t have to learn many exceptions! We will start by looking at one of the simplest rules. Once you know it, you will start sounding a lot more like someone who is familiar with Danish. It is called the V2 rule. "V2" translates to "verb second" and what this means is that the verb is always the second fragment or element of the sentence. Let’s have a look at some examples. The Danish verb for "is" sounds like this: |
| Anna Juul: er |
| [PAUSE 3 SECONDS] |
| Antoni: If we want to say, "He is here" in Danish, it will sound like this: |
| Anna Juul: Han er her. |
| [PAUSE 4 SECONDS] |
| Antoni: As you will have noticed, the verb is in the second position. It is the second element of the sentence. In English, if we want to emphasize the word "here," we can say, "here he is" and that word order would be perfectly acceptable. However, if we were to use the same word order in Danish, we would come up with this sentence: |
| Anna Juul: Her han er |
| Antoni: and that would be wrong. Why? Because the verb is not the second element of the sentence. The verb has been placed in the third position and this is not consistent with the V2 rule. In order to fix the sentence, we have to say: |
| Anna Juul: Her er han. |
| [PAUSE 4 SECONDS] |
| Antoni: With the verb in the second position, this sentence is now correct. And so you can see that the V2 rule is a very strict one. This rule stays in place, even if we mix the order of the rest of the words in the sentence around. As in the first example, |
| Anna Juul: Han er her |
| Antoni: is correct. |
| You might now be wondering why I said Danish sentence structures are so strict if we can move the rest of the words in the sentence around. It’s a very good question, and the answer is simple really. You see, in Danish sentences, the subject can move. The verb must always be in the second position, but the subject can be in either the first or the third position. Let’s try it with a few more words in the sentence. We will use the verb "understand," which, in Danish, sounds like this: |
| Anna Juul: forstår |
| [PAUSE 3 SECONDS] |
| Antoni: Let’s make the sentence "He understands Danish sentences now." In Danish, it sounds like this: |
| Anna Juul: Han forstår danske sætninger nu. |
| [PAUSE 4 SECONDS] |
| Antoni: As you can see, the verb is in the second position. In English, we can also say: "Now he understands Danish sentences." However, in Danish, we would have to say: |
| Anna Juul: Nu forstår han danske sætninger. |
| [PAUSE 4 SECONDS] |
| Antoni: This translates directly to: "Now understands he Danish sentences." From this example, you can again see how the verb stayed in the second position, but the subject "he" moved from the first position to the third. There are very few exceptions to this rule. |
| While talking about the subject in the third position, I’d like to point out that, if the subject is in the third position and there are two verbs, then the subject splits the verbs. Let’s look at an example. The Danish verb for "can" is: |
| Anna Juul: kan |
| [PAUSE 3 SECONDS] |
| Antoni: And, if we add that to our previous sentence, we can say: "Now he can understand Danish sentences." In Danish, it sounds like this: |
| Anna Juul: Nu kan han forstå danske sætninger. |
| [PAUSE 4 SECONDS] |
| Antoni: which translates directly to: "Now can he understand Danish sentences." As you can see, the subject "he," in the third position, splits the two verbs "can" and "understand." |
| There is another situation in which two verbs are split and that is when we are negating a sentence. Here’s an example. In Danish, the word for "not" is: |
| Anna Juul: ikke |
| [PAUSE 3 SECONDS] |
| Antoni: Let’s add it to our previous sentence to turn it into a negative. The negative sentence will then be: "He cannot understand Danish sentences now." In Danish, this is what it sounds like: |
| Anna Juul: Han kan ikke forstå danske sætninger nu. |
| [PAUSE 4 SECONDS] |
| Antoni: You should notice how the negation |
| Anna Juul: ikke |
| Antoni: split the two verbs |
| Anna Juul: kan |
| Antoni: and |
| Anna Juul: forstå |
| Antoni: Listen to the sentence one more time: |
| Anna Juul: Han kan ikke forstå danske sætninger nu. |
| Antoni: Pretty simple really. But what if there is only one verb and you want to negate a sentence? Well, if there is only one verb, then this negation is always positioned after the verb. Let’s listen to how we say, "He doesn’t understand Danish sentences now." |
| Anna Juul: Han forstår ikke danske sætninger nu. |
| [PAUSE 4 SECONDS] |
| Antoni: In this case, the direct translation is "He understands not Danish sentences now." As you can see, the negation follows the verb. It’s really not that complicated. |
| Finally, let’s look at a different aspect of Danish sentence structure, and that is where to put adverbials. Adverbials, if you are wondering, are words or phrases that tell us about time, place, method, and reason. They answer the questions: when, where, how, and why. When we have these elements in a Danish sentence, they should either be in the first position or the last position. Let’s make a sentence using the adverb "today". In Danish, this is: |
| Anna Juul: I dag |
| [PAUSE 3 SECONDS] |
| Antoni: Perhaps you could hear that it is actually a phrase, not a single word, like in English. However, it is still adverbial in nature. Now, let’s put it into a sentence. In English, we would say, "Today, I bought a car," and, in Danish, the same sentence would be: |
| Anna Juul: I dag købte jeg en bil. |
| [PAUSE 4 SECONDS] |
| Antoni: As you can hear, the adverbial phrase is in the first position. You can also put it at the end of the sentence, just like in the English: "I bought a car today." Listen to the Danish: |
| Anna Juul: Jeg købte en bil i dag. |
| [PAUSE 4 SECONDS] |
| Antoni: That should be pretty clear. There are other rules that apply when sentences get more complex, but you now know the basics of Danish sentence structure. Because of this, more complex sentences should not present much of a challenge. |
| [Summary] |
| In this lesson, we talked about how Danish sentences are structured. You learned about the V2 rule, which means that the verb is always in the second position in the sentence. |
| You also learned that the subject can move around but only between the first and third positions. |
| Adverbials can move around too, but only between the first and last positions in a sentence. |
| You also learned that the negation word in a sentence is always placed after the verb and that, if there are two verbs, it splits them. The subject of the sentence will also split two verbs if it is in the third position. These are the basics, and, once you know them, you will sound a lot more fluent when speaking or writing Danish! |
| Cultural Insight/Expansion (Optional) |
| Antoni: Danish, like English, is classified as an S-V-O language. This means it follows the subject-verb-object word order. There are many other languages that follow this order as well. These include Chinese, Spanish, French, and Portuguese. In English, meaning depends almost entirely on word order, but this is not true of Danish. This is why, for instance, we can move the subject and the adverbials around in Danish sentences. Interestingly, the V2 rule is found in every Germanic language, except in English. |
Outro |
| Antoni: Do you have any more questions? We’re here to answer them! |
| Anna Juul: Farvel! |
| Antoni: See you soon! |
| Credits: Anna Maria Juul (Danish, Denmark), Antoni (English, synthetic voice) |
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