Learn how to ask "Who?"
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| Hej, jeg hedder [name]. Hi everybody! I’m [name]. |
| Welcome to DanishClass101.com’s “Dansk på 3 minutter”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Danish. |
| In the last lesson, you learned how to ask "When" questions in Danish. |
| This time, you are going to ask questions with the interrogative word "Who?" |
| Imagine you want to ask your friend who the attractive girl just behind him is. |
| Here, the question you can ask is Hvem er det bag dig? |
| [slowly] Hvem er det bag dig? |
| This means “Who is that behind you?” |
| So let’s break down this answer: |
| First we had: |
| Hvem which is the basic translation of "Who" in Danish. |
| er which is "is," the present tense of the verb at være, which we have already studied. |
| det means "that." |
| And finally bag dig which is "behind you." |
| dig is the object pronoun for "you." |
| All together it is hvem er det bag dig? |
| So in Danish, "Who" is mainly translated as Hvem to ask about someone's identity. |
| For example, if you want to ask "Who are these people?" You will say Hvem er disse mennesker? when talking about a group of unknown people. |
| As in English, the interrogative word “who” is placed in the 1st position here, and is followed by the the verb and then the subject. |
| Hvem only works for people, so you can't use it to ask information about things or places. As an interrogative word, hvem can also be used to ask who did something, for example. |
| If you are in a museum for instance, you can ask Hvem malede dette billede? This means "Who painted this painting?" |
| Another interrogative formula derived from hvem that is used a lot is Hvis. In this case, the meaning is different as it can be translated to "Whose." |
| So if you want to ask "Whose pencil is it?" you will have to say Hvis blyant er det? |
| If we break down this question, it is- |
| A hvis which is "whose" |
| blyant which is “pencil”. |
| Then we have er which is the present tense of the verb at være, which you should know. |
| And finally, det, which means "it." |
| You can also use the word hvem to ask "for which person is it?" |
| So if you want to know "For which person is this piece of cake?" you can ask Hvem er dette stykke kage til? |
| Now it’s time for [name]’s Insights. |
| If someone that you didn't expect is knocking at your door in Denmark, the common question you can ask is Hvem er det? before opening the door. |
| This literally means "Who is it?" |
| Although it’s not all that common to ask this. Usually Danes will say “hallo?” while swinging their intonation up to indicate that it’s a question. |
| Before ending this lesson, Let’s go back and look at all the ways to translate "Who" in Danish: |
| - Hvem is the basic "Who" as in Hvem er den pige? meaning "Who is that girl?" Hvem er den pige? |
| - Hvis is insisting on the ownership, it is the equivalent of "Whose", as in "Whose pencil is it?" Hvis blyant er det? |
| In this lesson, you learned how to correctly use the interrogative word for "Who", which is Hvem in Danish, but also its variations. |
| Now you can easily know who is who! |
| The next lesson will be our last of this absolute beginner series. |
| We will deal with the last but not least common interrogative word Hvorfor, so I’ll be waiting for you in the next Dansk på 3 minutter. |
| På gensyn! |
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