Danish grammar
Danish grammar is either the study of the grammar of the Danish language, or the grammatical system itself of the Danish language. Danish is often described as having ten word classes: verbs, nouns, pronouns, numerals, adjectives, adverbs, articles, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections. The grammar is mostly suffixing. This article focuses on Standard Danish. Nouns. Inflections. There are two grammatical genders in Danish: "common" and "neuter". All nouns are mostly arbitrarily divided into these two classes. The singular indefinite article (a/an in English) is "en" for common-gender nouns and "et" for neuter nouns. They are often informally  called n-words and t-words. "En dreng". A boy. "Et fængsel". A jail. Unlike English, definite nouns in Danish are rendered by adding a suffix (ie, not an article) to the indefinite form (unless qualified by an adjective; see below). The definite singular ending is "-en" for common-gender nouns and "-et" for neuter nouns. "Drengen". The boy. "Fængslet". The jail. The plural noun suffixes are more complex. The following table shows the possible inflections of regular Danish nouns of both grammatical genders. The most common plural ending is -er. Besides an extremely large number of other nouns, nearly  all those that end with unstressed "-e" take it, as does the vast majority of those that end with a monophthong other than "-e". The zero plural ending is predominantly used with neuter nouns. The plural ending -e is used with: In the singular definite, common-gender nouns always take the ending "-en", while neuter nouns always take "-et". Plural definite adds "-ene" to the indefinite if it has no suffix or a borrowed suffix, otherwise "-ne" (exception: "mennesker" "human beings, people" → "menneske"("r")"ne"). Nouns that end in unstressed "-e" lose the "-e" when adding an ending: "kvinde, kvind-en , kvind-er, kvind-erne" "woman". Nouns that end in unstressed "-er", "-el", or "-en" lose or keep the "e" according to the rules below. When the loss of the "e" leads to a double consonant coming immediately before the stem-final "r", "l," or "n", it is simplified (e.g. "fætter, fæt_r-e" "male first cousin"; "seddel, sed_l-en, sed_l-er" "(bank)note"). It is common for nouns to change during inflection in ways that aren't reflected in spelling. They can lose stød (e.g. "hus" , "huset" , "huse" ), add stød, or lengthen the root vowel (the last two possibilities are exemplified by  bad , "badet" ). There are many nouns with irregular plurals. Here are some examples: Most either have vowel change with or without a suffix, or are foreign words using their native plurals. If a noun is preceded by a number composed of more than one distinct part, the last part determines the grammatical number. "1001 Nat" (literally "1001 Night") and "to en halv time" (literally "two and a half hour") use singular nouns, whereas English would use "nights" and "hours". Possessive. There are no case declensions in Danish nouns (but see the section on pronouns). Nouns are inflected only for possession  which is expressed with a possessive enclitic, for example "min fars hus"[min-my fars-father's hus - house] "my father's house" where the noun "far" carries the possessive enclitic. This is however different from the possessive form of pronouns, because in the case of longer noun phrases the -s attaches to the last word in the phrase, which need not be the head-noun or even a noun at all. For example, the phrases "kongen af Danmark's bolsjefabrik" [kongen-king af-of Danmark|s-Denmark|'s bolsje|fabrik-candy factory] "the king of Denmark's candy factory", or "det er  pigen Uffe bor sammen meds datter" "that is the daughter of the girl that Uffe lives with", where the enclitic attaches to a stranded preposition. When the noun can be considered part of the possessor noun physically (a part-whole relation), the possessive is often replaced by a prepositional phrase, e.g. "låget på spanden" "the lid on the bucket", "bagsiden af huset" "the back of the house" rather than "spandens låg", "husets bagside", which are not incorrect but more formal, and less informative. Older case forms exist as relics in phrases like "i live" "alive" ("liv" = "life"), "på tide  about time" ("tid" = "time"), "på fode" "on his foot" ("fod" = "foot"). Similarly, the genitive is used in certain fossilised prepositional phrases (with "til" "to"): "til fods" "on foot", "til vands/søs" "by water/sea", "gå til hånde" "assist" ("hånde" being an old genitive plural of "hånd" "hand", now replaced by "hænder"). (Compare "thereof" in English, the possessive case of "there", which survives only in fossilised semi-archaic or legal phrases like "or part thereof"). Articles. The indefinite article, "en, et", is prepositive as in all European languages that have an indefinite article, and the origin of the word  is the same as in the other Germanic languages, namely the numeral "én, ét" "one" . There is no indefinite article in the plural. The definite article, "-en, -et, -(e)ne", is postpositive as in the other Scandinavian languages save the West Jutlandic dialect of Danish, which has the prepositive "æ" (inflexible). The postpositive article comes from an old pronoun, Old Norse "inn", "that", related to English "yon" and German "jener" . The point of departure may be expressions like "ormr inn langi" > "ormrinn langi" "the long serpent". Yet, Danish only uses the postpositive article when the noun does not carry an  attributive adjective or a genitive, while otherwise a prepositive "den, det, de" is used instead (whereas both Norwegian and Swedish use the prepositive and the postpositive articles at the same time in such cases): Pronouns. The personal pronouns in Danish has three cases: nominative, oblique (or accusative), and possessive (or genitive). The nominative form is used when the pronoun is used as an unmodified subject, while the oblique form is used anywhere else: as direct and indirect object of verbs, prepositional complement, subject predicate, part of coordinated subject, or with following modifiers (such as 'there' and prepositional phrases). Danish also  has the generic pronoun 'one, you'; is often used as its oblique form. The second person singular pronoun 'you' can also be used with generic reference. Verbs. In contemporary Danish, the verb has up to nine distinct forms, as shown in the chart below. Person and number. Verbs do not vary according to person or number: "jeg venter, du venter, han, hun, den, det venter, vi venter, I venter, de venter". However, until the beginning of the twentieth century, it was normal to inflect the present tense in number in educated prose. There existed also a special plural form in  the imperative. These forms are not used anymore, but can be found in older prose: For example, "Søger, saa skulle I finde" "Seek, and ye shall find" (Matthew 7:7); in the 1992 translation "Søg, så skal I finde". Tenses. Like in other Germanic languages, the conjugation of verb tenses is divided into two groups: The first group, the so-called weak verbs, indicates the past tense by adding the suffixes "-ede" or "-te". The second, called strong verbs, forms the past tense with a zero ending and, in most cases, certain vowel changes. The future tense is formed with the  modal verbs "vil" or "skal" and the infinitive, e.g. "tror du, det vil regne", "do you think it's going to rain", "vi skal nok komme igen i morgen", "we'll come again tomorrow". Often the present tense is also used as future, only with the addition of a time specification "i morgen køber han en bil", "tomorrow he'll buy a car". In the perfect, the word "har" ("have, has") is placed before the past participle: "han har købt en bil", "he has bought a car". In certain words implying a movement, however, "er" ("am, are, is") is used  instead: " han er gået sin vej", "he has gone" (like German "er ist gegangen" or French "il est allé"). In such cases "har" is used for the activity, while "er" is used if the result is what is interesting. "Han har rejst meget", "he has traveled a lot". "Han er rejst", "he is gone", he is not here anymore. Similarly, the pluperfect is formed with "havde" or "var": "han havde købt en bil", "han var gået sin vej". NB. The perfect is used in many cases where English would have a simple preterite. Moods. In Danish, there are two finite  moods, indicative and imperative. Depending on interpretation, there may also be an optative. In short, Danish morphology offers very little in moods. Just like English, Danish depends on tense and modals to express moods. Example: Where a language with an explicit subjunctive mood (such as German, Spanish, or Icelandic) would use that mood in hypothetical statements, Danish uses a strategy similar to that of English. Compare: a. Real, or at least possibly real, situation in present time: "Hvis Peter køber kage, laver Anne kaffe." "If Peter buys [some] cake, Anne makes coffee." Here, the present indicative is used. b. Real , or at least possibly real, situation in past time: "Hvis Peter købte kage, lavede Anne kaffe." "If Peter bought [some] cake, Anne made coffee." Here, the past indicative is used. c. Unreal situation in present time: "Hvis Peter købte kage, lavede Anne kaffe." "If Peter bought [some] cake, Anne made coffee." (Implying: But Peter doesn't actually buy any cake, so Anne doesn't make coffee—making the whole statement hypothetical.) Here, the past indicative is used. d1. Unreal situation in past time: "Hvis Peter havde købt kage, havde Anne lavet kaffe." "If Peter had bought [some] cake, Anne had  made coffee." (Implying that Peter didn't actually buy any cake and so Anne didn't make coffee—making the whole statement hypothetical.) Here, the pluperfect indicative is used. A language with a full subjunctive mood, the way it typically works in Indo-European languages, would translate cases a. and b. with indicative forms of the verb, and case c. and d. with subjunctive forms. In the hypothetical cases (c. and d.), Danish and English create distance from reality by "moving the tense one step back". Although these sentences do work, however, it would be normal in Danish as well  as in English, to further stress the irreality by adding a modal. So that, instead of either example c. or d1, Danish and English would add "ville/would" in the main sentence, creating what may be considered a periphrastic subjunctive: d2. Unreal situation in past time: "Hvis Peter havde købt kage, ville Anne have lavet kaffe." "If Peter had bought [some] cake, Anne would have made coffee." Voice. Like the other Scandinavian languages, Danish has a special inflection for the passive voice with the suffix "-s", which is historically a reduced enclitic form of the reflexive pronoun "sig" ("himself, herself , itself, themselves"), e.g. "han kalder sig" "he calls himself" > "han kaldes" "he is called". Danish has a competing periphrastic form of the passive formed with the verb "blive" ("to remain, to become"). In addition to the proper passive constructions, the passive also denotes: In the preterite, the periphrastic form is preferred in non-formal speech except in reciprocal and impersonal passives: "de sås ofte" "they often saw each other", "der fandtes en lov imod det" "there was a law against it" (but real passive: "de blev set af politiet" "they were seen by the police", "der blev fundet en  bombe" "a bomb was found"). The s-form of the verb can also imply habitual or repetitive action, e.g. "bilen vaskes" "the car is washed" (regularly) vs. "bilen bliver vasket" "the car is (being) washed" (right now, soon, next week, etc.) The "s"-passive of the perfect participle is regular in Swedish both in the real passive and in other functions, e.g. "vårt företag har funnits sedan 1955" "our company has existed since 1955", "bilen har setts ute på Stockholms gator" "the car has been seen in the streets of S." In Danish, the real passive has only periphrastic forms in  the perfect: "bilen er blevet set ude på Stockholms gader". In the lexicalised and reciprocal passives, on the other hand, we find a combination of the verb "have" and the "s"-passive preterite: e.g. "mødtes" "have met", "har fandtes" "have existed" etc. (but strangely enough, the irregular "har set(e)s" "have seen each other" is much more common than "har sås", which is considered substandard). Present participles. The present participle is used to a much lesser extent than in English. The dangling participle, a characteristic feature of English, is not used in Danish. Instead Danish uses subordinate or coordinate clauses with a  finite verb, e.g. "eftersom han var konge, var det ham, der måtte bestemme", "Being the king, he had the last word". The present participle is used in two circumstances: If the present participle carries an object or an adverb, the two words are normally treated as a compound orthographically and prosodically: "et menneskeædende uhyre", "a man-eating monster", "en hurtig(t)løbende bold", "a fast(-going) ball", "fodbold- og kvindeelskende mænd", "men loving football and women". Past participles. The past participle is used primarily in the periphrastic constructions of the passive (with "blive") and the perfect (with "være"). It is often used in  dangling constructions in the solemn prose style: "Således oplyst(e) kan vi skride til afstemning", "Now being informed, we can take a vote", "han tog, opfyldt af had til tyrannen, ivrig del i forberedelserne til revolutionen", "filled with hatred of the tyrant, he participated eagerly in the preparations for the revolution". The past participle of the weak verbs has the ending "-et" or "-t". The past participle of the strong verbs originally had the ending "-en", neuter "-et", but the common form is now restricted to the use as an adjective (e.g. "en bunden opgave"), and it has not been preserved  in all verbs. When it is combined with "er" and "har" to form passive and perfect constructions, the neuter form, which happens to be identical to the ending of the weak verbs, is used. In the Jutlandic dialects, "-en" is frequently used in such constructions. As to the voice of the past participle, it is passive if the verb is transitive, and active if it is intransitive. Infinitive and verbal nouns. The infinitive may be defined as a verb form that is equivalent to a noun syntactically. The Danish infinitive may be used as the subject or object of a  verb like in English: "at rejse er at leve" "to travel is to live", "jeg elsker at spise kartofler" "I love to eat potatoes". Furthermore, the Danish infinitive may also be governed by a preposition (where English normally has the gerund): "han tog livet af sig ved at springe ud af et vindue" "he killed himself by jumping out of a window". The infinitive normally has the marker "at", pronounced or in normal speech , thereby being homonymous with the conjunction "og" "and", with which it is sometimes confused in spelling. The bare infinitive is used after the modal verbs "kunne , ville, skulle, måtte, turde, burde". A rarer form is the verbal noun with the ending "-en" (not to be confused with the definite article) which is used when the infinitive carries a pronoun, an indefinite article or an adjective: "hans evindelige skrigen var enerverende", "his never-ending crying was enervating", "der var en løben og råben på gangene", "people ran and cried in the hall". This use has a connotation of something habitual and is often used in a negative sense. It is used in formal information like "Henstillen af cykler forbudt", "It is prohibited to leave your bike here ." Whereas the infinitive is accompanied with adjectives in the neuter ("det er svært at flyve", "it is difficult to fly"), the verbal noun governs the common gender. Due to the rarity of this form, Danes often mistakenly write "Henstilling af cykler forbudt" (lit. "Recommendation of bikes prohibited") instead, using a more familiar word form. Verbal nouns like "viden" "knowledge" (literally: "knowing") or "kunnen" "ability" (literally: "being able") have become lexicalised due to the influence of German ("Wissen", "Können"). Like the proper verbal noun, these forms have no plural, and they cannot carry the definite article; so, when English has  the knowledge, Danish must use a pronoun or a circumlocution: e.g. "hans viden", "denne viden", "den viden man havde". Danish has various suffixes for turning a verb into a real noun: Numerals. Overview. The Danish numbers are: Vigesimal system. Counting above forty is in part based on a base 20 number system, called vigesimal: "halvtred-s(inds-tyve)" = 2 x 20, "tre-s(inds-tyve)" = 3 x 20, "halvfjerd-s(inds-tyve)" = 3 x 20, "fir-s(inds-tyve)" = 4 x 20, "halvfem-s(inds-tyve)" = 4 x 20 ("halvtredje", "halvfjerde" and "halvfemte" (lit. "halfthird", "halffourth" and halffifth") being old  words for 2, 3 and 4). This is unlike Swedish and Norwegian, both of which use a decimal system. The word "fyrre" / "fyrretyve" = "40" does not belong to the vigesimal system. The optional second part of the word is not the number "tyve", "20", but an old plural of "ti", "ten" (like in English "forty", German "vierzig"); the first part is a variant of the number "fire", "four". Similarly, "tredive" is a compound of "tre", "three", and a weakened form of the old plural of "ti", "ten". Vigesimal systems are known in several European languages: French, Breton, Welsh, Albanian , and Basque. Some scholars speculate that the system belongs to an "Old European" (i.e. pre-Indo-European) substratum, whereas others argue that the system is a recent innovation of the Middle Ages. See Vigesimal. Sequence of numbers. The ones are placed before the tens with an intervening "og" ("and"): "toogfyrre" (42), "seksoghalvfjers" (76). The ones and the tens are placed after the hundreds with an optional "og": "to hundred (og) femoghalvfjers". This system is similar to that of German and Dutch ("zweiundvierzig", "zweihundertfünfundsiebzig"), but unlike that of Swedish ("fyrtiotvå", "tvåhundrasjuttiofem"). Adjectives and adverbs. Declension. There are three forms of the  adjective in Danish: Only words ending in a consonant take -e. Only words ending in a consonant or the vowels -i or -å take -t. Others are unchanged. Agreement. The adjective must agree with the word that it qualifies in both gender and number. This rules also applies when the adjective is used predicatively: "huset er stort", "the house is big", or "bøgerne er billige", "the books are cheap". An exception to the rule of agreement are the superlative and, in regular prose, the past participle when used in the verbal meaning (e.g. "børnene er sluppet løs", "the children have  been let out", but "børnene er løsslupne", "the children are unrestrained"). Definite form. The definite "e"-form is historically identical to the so-called weak declension of the Germanic adjective, cf. German "ein großes Haus", "a big house" ~ "das große Haus", "the big house". But whereas the German definite form is not used after a genitive ("Peters großes Haus"), or following the bare forms of the possessive and indefinite pronouns ("mein, kein großes Haus") – but conversely is used after the indefinite pronoun in the forms that have an ending ("meinem, keinem großen Haus" = "dem großen Haus") – the Danish definite  form is used in all instances after any determiner save the indefinite article: Comparison. The Danish adjectives and adverbs are inflected according to three degrees of comparison. The comparative has the ending "-ere" (sometimes "-re") and the superlative has the ending "-st" (sometimes "-est"): e.g. "hurtig, hurtigere, hurtigst", "quick, -er, -est"; "fræk, frækkere, frækkest", "impertinent/audacious/kinky, -er, -est"; "lang, længere, længst" (with umlaut), "long, -er, -est". The choice between "-st" and "-est" is determined by the syllable structure (to avoid uncomfortable consonant clusters), whereas the variant "-re" is used only in a few frequent comparatives. In many cases, especially  in longer words and words of a Latin or Greek origin, the comparative and superlative are formed with the adverbs "mere" and "mest" instead: e.g. "intelligent, mere intelligent, mest intelligent". The comparative is inflexible, and it is not used with the definite article (in which case Danish uses the superlative instead). The conjunction of comparison is "end", "than". The superlative is inflected like the positive (the "t"-form being identical to the "n"-form); "længst, længste". When used as a predicate, the basic form is used instead of the "e"-form: "hans ben er længst" "his legs are the longest". And since a  superlative used attributively must necessarily modify something definite, the "e"-form is always used there: "den vredeste killing er vredest" "the angriest kitty is angriest". Irregularities. The inflection of some adjectives is irregular: Interjections. Danish has a number of interjections. Emotive interjections include 'ow' among others. Response tokens include and 'yes' and 'no', and (approx. 'oh'), and . When responding to polar questions, and are sensitive to the presence of a negation ( 'not', 'nobody' or 'never') in the question, so that confirms a negated statement, and , an alternate form of is used to disconfirm a negated statement. They can be used in  various combinations with other words (including other response tokens). Syntax. Danish is a V2-language, meaning that the finite verb can usually be found in second position in a main clause. The basic sentence structure is Subject-Verb-Object. Paul Diderichsen developed a model of the Danish sentences with different slots to be filled. Main Clauses. According to Diderichsen's model, main clauses have the following structure: Not every slot of the model needs to be filled in order to form a grammatical main clause. The model shows relative positions of constituents, especially in relation to the finite verb. So  a sentence like is fully grammatical even though not every slot of the clause model is filled. The only position that is obligatory to form a clause is the v-position of the finite verb. Every slot of the model can be filled by specific constituents. The F-position can be filled by a nominal as subject or object, adverbials or non-finite verbs, i.e. by most phrases that can form constituents. As Danish is a V2-language, the second position (v) is always filled with the finite verb. If the subject was not in the F-position, it can  be found in the n-position, other nominals are also possible. The a-position contains clausal adverbials, e.g. negation and may contain more than one element. Non-finite verbs or particles or both can be found in the V-position. The N-position is filled by nominals which can function as objects, in case of ditransitive verbs there can be two objects here, complements or the real subject if there is a dummy subject der in F-position. The A-position contains other adverbials, which are called content adverbials. The N-position and A-position can also be seen as  sequences of positions as they can be filled by more than one constituent and because there is an internal order to these constituents, e.g. that direct objects usually follow indirect objects in the N-position. Constituents in the F-position. The F-position of main clauses can be filled by a variety of constituents. When this happens, the subject is moved to the n-position. Most frequently, adverbial expressions of time and place are moved to the F-position. This movement is performed to mark the fronted constituent pragmatically, both constituents with high and low pragmatic prominence can be fronted . So you can find information already known from the pretext in this position as well as new information. To express contrast, the element in F-position is stressed. Focused elements are usually not found in the F-position with the exception of wh-words in wh-questions. Subordinate Clauses. Below you can see the model for the structure of subordinate clauses: Different to main clauses, the first position k is for the subordinate conjunction. This position is usually filled, but the conjunction "at" and the relative pronoun "som" can sometimes be omitted. The subject of the clause follows in the  n-position. This position needs to be filled in every subordinate clause. In difference to main clauses, clausal adverbials precede the finite verb in subordinate clauses. Sentence types. Questions. Danish has a number of question types. Polar interrogatives have interrogative word order (i.e. an unfilled foundation field), while content questions have a question word ( 'wh-word') in the foundation field. Declarative questions and in situ questions also exist. Imperative. Besides using the imperative form of the verb, the imperative sentence type is characterized by not having a subject. However, it is possible to have it, always placed after the verb