Talk:Danish grammar

message: 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)
replies: text:  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)
thread_title: Subjunctive

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

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title: Expression of the future

message: 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)
thread_title:  Declension 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Verbs 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Adjectives 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Comparisons with German 

message: 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)
replies: text: "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)
thread_title:  Misconceptions about the letter  T 

message: 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)
replies: text: You're welcome to change the example! //Replayful (talk | contribs) 13:18, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, please try to use examples that we really might hear in everyday life. Doric Loon (talk) 08:41, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Someone did something. Yay! //Replayful (talk | contribs) 17:59, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: (though I'm somewhat wondering if anyone can come up with an example that doesn't imply potential cheating on your wife...) //Replayful (talk | contribs) 08:59, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

text: 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)
thread_title:  Why this needless brutality?