INTRODUCTION |
This lesson is not just for all of the vegetarians out there, but it's also for anyone with an aversion to a particular food! There are many reasons a person won't eat a particular food, and there may be times when communicating this is necessary. In this lesson, we'll go over some phrases to make sure you don't get any unwanted surprises on your plate. |
GRAMMAR POINT |
In Danish, “I am a vegetarian” is |
Jeg er vegetar. |
Let's break it down by syllable. |
(slow) Jeg er vegetar. |
Now let's hear it once again. |
Jeg er vegetar. |
The first words jeg er translates as “I am”. |
(slow) Jeg er. |
Once more: |
Jeg er. |
Then we have vegetar. This is easy to guess the meaning of - it’s “vegetarian”. |
Let’s hear the whole sentence one more time |
(slow) Jeg er vegetar. |
Jeg er vegetar. |
This means, “I am vegetarian.” |
Another way you can communicate that you don't eat a particular food is by saying just that! |
In Danish, “I don't eat meat” is |
Jeg spiser ikke kød. |
Let's break it down by syllable. |
(slow) Jeg spiser ikke kød. |
Now let's hear it once more. |
Jeg spiser ikke kød. |
The first word, jeg, as you might remember, is “I”. |
Next, we have spiser, which is the present form of the verb “to eat”. |
(slow) Spiser. |
Spiser. |
After the verb, we get the negation word ikke which means “not” in English. |
(slow) Ikke. |
Ikke. |
Last we have kød, which means “meat”. |
(slow) Kød. |
Kød. |
All together, we have Jeg spiser ikke kød. |
Literally, this means, “I eat not meat.” But it translates as “I don’t eat meat.” |
(slow) Jeg spiser ikke kød. |
Jeg spiser ikke kød. |
Let’s now imagine that you don’t eat cheese. All you have to do is to replace kød with the Danish word for cheese. That is ost. |
(slow) Ost. |
Ost. |
Now let's try the phrase with this word. “I don't eat cheese” in Danish is |
Jeg spiser ikke ost. |
Let’s break it down by syllable. |
(slow) Jeg spiser ikke ost. |
Now let’s hear it one more time. |
Jeg spiser ikke ost. |
If you want to make sure some food doesn’t have an ingredient you can’t or don’t want to eat, you should simply ask about it. For example, if you want to make sure a meal doesn’t have meat, you should ask, Er der kød i denne ret?, which means “Is there meat in this dish?” |
(slow) Er der kød i denne ret? |
Er der kød i denne ret? |
The first word er means, “is”. |
(slow) Er. |
Er. |
Then you have der, which means, “there” . |
(slow) Der. |
Der. |
This is followed by the thing you want to enquire about. In our case “meat” |
(slow) Kød. |
Kød. |
Next we have i denne which is translated as “in this”. |
(slow) I denne. |
I denne. |
And last we have the word for “dish” |
(slow) Ret. |
Ret. |
Let’s hear it one more time. |
(slow) Er der kød i denne ret? |
Er der kød i denne ret? |
As we mentioned in our previous lessons, Danes use pork a lot in their dishes. Let’s imagine that you don’t eat pork, and you have to be more specific. It is very simple. “I don’t eat pork” is: |
Jeg spiser ikke svinekød. |
Let’s break it down by syllable. |
(slow) Jeg spiser ikke svinekød. |
Once more |
Jeg spiser ikke svinekød. |
In this phrase, svinekød is translated as “pork meat”. |
(slow) Svinekød. |
Svinekød. |
The whole sentence is Jeg spiser ikke svinekød. |
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