BASICS 1

Nouns
Danish has two noun genders: Common (or n-words) and neuter (or t-words). Each of
these have their own article for indefinite singular. Common words take en and neuter
words take et.
In this skill you will only be dealing with indefinite and definite, singular nouns such as a
boy, the woman etc. The following skills will gradually introduce you to the plural forms.
Unfortunately, in Danish there is no certain way to tell from a noun which gender it is.
So this you will have to learn by heart. There have been made attempts to develop a
pattern for determining the gender of a noun from the word itself, and one such can be
found here.
The short version is that about 80% of nouns are common gender (taking en as the
indefinite article), including most living and animate entities.
The Definite Form
Instead of marking the definite form with an article, Danish uses postfixing. Simply put,
the indefinite article is appended to the end of the noun to mark definiteness: -en for
common gender and -et for the neuter gender.

en mand (a man, common gender) adds -en and becomes manden (the man)
vand (water, neuter gender) adds -et and becomes vandet.
If the noun already ends with -e most often only -n (for common) or -t (for neuter) is
appended:

et ble (an apple, neuter gender) becomes blet (the apple).

To see how simple this really is, have a look at this table:

Indefinite article Definite postfix

en -en

et -et

In some cases an article is used instead of a postfix to mark the definite form, for
example when modifying the noun with an adjective. But do not worry about this for
now, it will be explained later :) Furthermore, just to ruin the beautiful simplicity, some
nouns change an internal vowel when put in the definite - Again, more about this later.
Subject Pronouns
Subject pronouns are used to indicate the person performing an action: In the
sentenceyou drive a car, the word you informs us who is driving the car.
While this particular skill only involves singular subject pronouns (I, you, and he/she,
specifically), we will show you all the (personal) subject pronouns here for
completeness. Don't worry, we'll include this table again later when the rest of the
subject pronouns are introduced!

English Danish

I jeg

you du

he, she, it han, hun, den/det*

we vi

you (plural) I**

they de

*) Depending on the grammatical gender of the subject. As a rule of thumb, use den for
all living things, det for inanimate objects.
**) Always capitalized.
Present Tense Verbs
You will love verbs in Danish. They conjugate not for the subject, not for the object, nor
for the number of people. They only care about the time (present, past), the aspect
(active, passive), and the mood (indicative, imperative). But do not worry about all that
just yet, just be overjoyed that there are only seven forms of each verb :)
For now, just know that present tense (things happening right now, or general
statements) end in -r, and do not change regarding to the person carrying out the
action. As an example, look at the conjugations of at spise (to eat) in the present:

English Danish

I eat jeg spiser

you eat du spiser

he, she, it eats han, hun, den/det spiser

we eat vi spiser
English Danish

you (plural) eat I spiser

they eat de spiser

Isn't that beautiful? Similarly, the only form of to be in present (I am, you are, he, she, it
is, etc.) is simply er: jeg er, du er, and so on.
To make things even simpler, as to the verb anyway, Danish verbs have no concept of
continuous actions such as I am eating. When you say jeg spiser it means all of I
eat (in general), I am eating (right now), or I will eat (tomorrow).

BASICS 2
Subject Pronouns
Here they are again, for your reference:

English Danish

I jeg

you du

he, she, it han, hun, den/det

we vi

you (plural) I*

they de

* Always capitalized.
Definite Nouns
Once again, this beautifully simple system:

Indefinite article Definite postfix

en -en

et -et

Some examples from the previous skill:

 en mand (a man, common gender) becomes manden (the man)
vand (water, neuter gender) becomes vandet.
et ble (an apple, neuter gender) becomes blet (the apple).
Plural Nouns
Nouns form the plural by appending either -er (most commonly) or just -e:

en avis (a newspaper) adds -er and becomes aviser (newspapers).

en dreng (a boy) adds -e and becomes drenge (boys).
Again, if the words ends in an -e the double-e is eliminated:

en pige (a girl) adds -er and eliminates the double-e to become piger (girls).
Whether a word uses -er or -e is unrelated to its grammatical gender, and is
something that must be learned by heart. Furthermore, some nouns do not change at
all in the plural. These must also be learned by heart. There are, however, some
general guidelines:

The -er postfix is the most common one. Nouns containing multiple syllables
usually take the -er ending.
Single syllabic words of the common gender (n-words) often use the -e ending.
Short, single syllabic nouns of the neuter gender are most likely to remain
unchanged in the plural.
Source.
Oh, and remember those irregular nouns we talked about in the previous lesson? This
lesson will introduce the first of them

en mand (a man) adds no postfix but becomes mnd (men).

Plural Definite Nouns
In the plural definite form (such as the cars), nouns in Danish add -ne to the plural
form:

en kvinde (a woman) has the plural kvinder (women) and adds -ne to
becomekvinderne (the women).
en dreng (a boy) has the plural drenge (boys) and adds -ne to
become drengene(the boys).
This is independent from the grammatical gender of a noun, like the plural form. Again,
however, some nouns are irregular, for example:
 en mand (a man) has the plural mnd (men) but regains the lost -e in the
plural, adding -ene to become mndene (the men).
Hopefully you are not overwhelmed yet! There are very few irregular nouns, and most
follow the system we can now show as a complete table including singular/plural and
definite/indefinite:

Singular, indefinite Singular, definite Plural, indefinite Plural, definite

en -en -er, -e -erne, -ene

et -et -er, -e -erne, -ene

COMMON PHRASES

A note on Capitalization
As you might have noticed already, in Danish, the first person personal pronoun is not
capitalized: It might be I eat in English, but in Danish it's jeg spiser.
There are a number of other things, which are capitalized in English, that are not
capitalized in Danish. This includes names of languages, as you will notice in this skill,
but also days of the week and names of months.
Giving the Time of the Day
This skill will teach you a number of words you can use to greet and part with people.
Some are generic and can be used at any time, such as hej and farvel. The
word hej is a funny case that can both be used as a greeting and a farewell.
Sometimes, for farewells, it is doubled into hej hej.
Others can only be used at specific times of the day, and primarily as greetings:

Godmorgen means good morning and so should only be used in the morning,
logically.
Godaften translates to good evening and is usually applicable after the work day
ends.
Goddag, meaning good day can be used more freely, but is usually not used
whengodmorgen or godaften would be more appropriate.
Just as in English, godnat (good night) is not used as a greeting, but only in parting --
or in wishing a friend or loved one a blissful sleep!
Danish has a few extra greetings for specific periods of the day, which will not be
taught here. But don't be surprised if people give you either god formiddag or god
eftermiddagfor the period between morning and noon, and the afternoon, respectively.
The Case of the Missing Please
Unfortunately, Danish has no simple translation for the word please. Rather, asking for
things politely involves some set phrases and modal verbs. Naturally, this will not
appear in this skill, so don't fret :)

FOOD

Sticking Words Together

You might already have noticed this trend. If not, this skill contains a few examples of
how much Danes love to form new words by sticking two or more words together.
We call these "compound nouns", although sometimes they have become so ingrained
in the language that they're really just plain words now. In some cases the words are
just put together directly (no space), and in other cases they require a little glue, in the
form of an -e- or an -s- between them.
This skill contains the following words built from individual meanings:

Jordbr comes from jord meaning earth or ground and br meaning berry: So,
a berry growing near the ground? Strawberry!
Svinekd is constructed from svin, the glue -e- and kd. The first part
means pig(or, more literally, swine) and the second meat. Meat from a pig, or as
it's called in English, pork.
Morgenmad consists of the words morgen and mad, translating
to morning andfood. Put them together, and they carry the meaning of breakfast.
Aftensmad is similar, but with aften, meaning evening, and the glue -s-. So this
one is dinner or supper.
You will meet many more such words during this course, and there is even an entire
skill dedicated to learning some more complicated ones further down the tree.
If you're ever having trouble deciphering a particular Danish word, try to see if you can't
pick it apart in to smaller components, and understand it that way :)

ANIMALS
Consonant Doubling
Recall the way nouns are put into the definite:

Indefinite article Definite postfix

en -en

et -et

In some cases, however, it is necessary to double the ending consonant of a word

when forming the definite (and also the plurals). For example, the word for cat:

En kat becomes katten.

This occurs when the preceding vowel is short, and the word does not already have
two consonants succeeding it (in the same syllable). For example, the word
for dog does not double the last consonant:

En hund simply becomes hunden.

As a rule of thumb, Danish marks a short vowel by having two consonants after it in the
same syllable. However, unlike its siblings Swedish and Norwegian, we do not double
the same consonant if nothing follows it. Hence, it is kat in Danish and not katt like in
Swedish/Norwegian, but katten in all of them.

DEFINITIVES

The Definite Form

As you may recall, Danish uses postfixing instead of marking the definite form with an
article. Simply put, the indefinite article is appended to the end of the noun to mark
definiteness: -en for common gender and -et for the neuter gender.

en mand (a man, common gender) adds -en and becomes manden (the man)
vand (water, neuter gender) adds -et and becomes vandet.
If the noun already ends with -e most often only -n (for common) or -t (for neuter) is
appended:

et ble (an apple, neuter gender) becomes blet (the apple).

Put in a table, it looks like this:
Indefinite article Definite postfix

en -en

et -et

Consonant Doubling
In some cases, however, it is necessary to double the ending consonant of a word
when forming the definite (and also the plurals). For example, the word for cat:

En kat becomes katten.

This occurs when the preceding vowel is short, and the word does not already have
two consonants succeeding it (in the same syllable). For example, the word
for dog does not double the last consonant:

En hund simply becomes hunden.

As a rule of thumb, Danish marks a short vowel by having two consonants after it in the
same syllable. However, it does not double the same consonant if nothing follows it.
Hence, it is kat in Danish and not katt but katten in the definite form. Another example
isg (egg), which in the definite form is gget (the egg).
Plural Definite Nouns
In the plural definite form (such as the cars), nouns in Danish add -ne to the plural
form:

en kvinde (a woman) has the plural kvinder (women) and adds -ne to
becomekvinderne (the women).
en dreng (a boy) has the plural drenge (boys) and adds -ne to
become drengene(the boys).
This is independent from the grammatical gender of a noun, like the plural form. Again,
however, some nouns are irregular, for example:

en mand (a man) has the plural mnd (men) but regains the lost -e in the
plural, adding -ene to become mndene (the men).
The complete table including singular/plural and definite/indefinite looks like this:

Singular, indefinite Singular, definite Plural, indefinite Plural, definite

en -en -er, -e -erne, -ene

Singular, indefinite Singular, definite Plural, indefinite Plural, definite

et -et -er, -e -erne, -ene

PLURALS

Plural Nouns
Nouns in Danish form the plural by appending either -er (most commonly) or just -e:

en avis (a newspaper) adds -er and becomes aviser (newspapers*).

en hund (a dog) adds -e and becomes hunde (dogs).
Again, if the words ends in an -e the double-e is eliminated:

en pige (a girl) adds -er and eliminates the double-e to become piger (girls).
Whether a word uses -er or -e is unrelated to its grammatical gender, and is
something that must be learned by heart. Furthermore, some nouns do not change at
all in the plural. These must also be learned by heart. There are, however, some
general guidelines:

The -er postfix is the most common one. Nouns containing multiple syllables
usually take the -er ending.
Single syllabic words of the common gender (n-words) often use the -e ending.
Short, single syllabic nouns of the neuter gender are most likely to remain
unchanged in the plural.
Source.
A small number of nouns change an inner vowel when forming the plural, such as:

en and (a duck) becomes nder (ducks).

en bog (a book) becomes bger (books).
Typically these are transformations from a to or o to .
Another group of nouns, typically long words that end in -el and -en without stress on
the last syllable, will drop that e. Examples include:

en kartoffel (a potato) adds -er but then drops the e before the l to
becomekartofler (potatoes)
 en tallerken (a plate) adds -er and drops the e before the n to
become tallerkner(plates).
Consonant Doubling
Recall the way nouns are put into the definite:

Indefinite article Definite postfix

en -en

et -et

In some cases, however, it is necessary to double the ending consonant of a word

when forming the plural (and also the definite). For example, the word for cat:

En kat becomes katte.

This occurs when the preceding vowel is short, and the word does not already have
two consonants succeeding it (in the same syllable). For example, the word
for dog does not double the last consonant:

En hund simply becomes hunde.

As a rule of thumb, Danish marks a short vowel by having two consonants after it in the
same syllable. However, it does not double the same consonant if nothing follows it.
Hence, it is kat in Danish and not katt.
Word from English
A limited number of loan words from English retain their original, English plural form:

En sandwich (a sandwich) is simply sandwiches in Danish.

However, it would not, in most cases, be wrong to form the plural using the Danish
structure, if you so wish :)

GENITIVE NOUNS

The Genitive Case

Forming the genitive in Danish is so simple you might think we're kidding. But we're
not! :) One simply adds -s (no apostrophe) to whatever one wishes to put in the
genitive. For example:

Kvindens ble which means the woman's apple.

To break it down: kvinde (woman) + -n (the, or definite) + -s ('s, or genitive).
This is the only way of forming the genitive. There is no equivalent to the English of,
such as in the house of my parents. Instead the -s is used every time, for all things:

Husets brn which in English would be the children of the house, consisting
ofhus (house) + -et (definite) + -s (genitive).
If the word that the -s is appended to already ends in an s or an s-sound, an
apostrophe is used instead of an extra s:

En gris' avis meaning A pig's newspaper (gris meaning pig).

Most often, the genitive is not even referred to as a grammatical case at all, because it
can really be appended to anything, and not just nouns. Entire clauses can be put in
the genitive, such as the-lady-at-the-back of-the-bus's hat although some people
consider it bad language. But don't worry about that now!