[Other] An appetizer on the Danish language

[ElDanés]

I realize that this is a forum on the Spanish language, but although my native language is not Spanish, I want to share it with you. My native language is Danish, and this will be a small appetizer on the language. You may read it just for fun, or maybe to use it as a start, and continue learning the language elsewhere.

This appetizer includes:

• Pronouns (only the nominative ones)
• Verbs (only the present tense)
• Noun genders and articles
• Numerals

I will throughout the appetizer try to compare words and grammar to both English and Spanish, so that you, the reader, easier can relate to it. I will also talk a little about pronunciation, and how the language is used on daily basis.


Pronouns
As already mentioned a couple of times, this is only an appetizer to the Danish language, thus I will only briefly cover the nominative pronouns.

• Singular
  • First person: jeg
  • Second person
    • Informal: du
    • Formal: De
  • Third person
    • Personal
      • Masculine: han
      • Feminine: hun
    • Impersonal
      • Common: den
      • Neuter: det
• Plural
  • First person: vi
  • Second person
    • Informal: I
    • Formal: De
  • Third person: de

You may think that these look nothing like the English or the Spanish ones, but you can actually find similarities. Just take the first person singular, jeg. When pronounced, the last part, -eg, actually sounds like the English first person singular, I, but with a J on the beginning. Also, the second person singular, du, looks and sounds awfully much like the Spanish, tú.

Even though Danish has the formal word, De (in both second person singular, and plural), it isn't used much. Normally, you would simply just use du, or I, when you're addressing people, and not De. People will not be offended if you're not using the formal one, as nobody really uses it nowadays.
There's some situation where you still use it though. If you go into stores and alike, the people working in the store will usually address you formally, and if you're meeting some from the royal family, you shall remember to address them formally. Also, it's a good idea to use the formal pronouns when you're speaking to older people, as the formal pronouns were still used in their generation.


Verbs
Verbs are relatively easy to handle in the Danish language, especially in present tense. In the past tense, perfect tense, and so on, you will meet many more irregularities, than you will with the present tense. That's also the reason why I stick to the present tense, so that you're not getting overwhelmed immediately.

When you look words up in a dictionary, you will get the form: at (verb). It's equivalent to how the English looks like: to (verb). If the verb is very irregular, or has irregularities in some tenses, or alike, the dictionary will show you the correct forms. So basically, when you learn the Danish language it's enough just to learn the regularities, and when you hit against an irregular verb, the dictionary will guide you.

Some verbs:

• at gå => to walk
• at holde => to hold
• at drikke => to drink
• at sige => to say
• at bære => to carry
• at flyve => to fly

Like already mentioned, it's very easy to form the present tense of verbs in Danish. You will just have to append -r, if the verb ends on a vowel, and -er, if it ends on a consonant. All verbs following another pattern are irregular verbs. You may also note, that even though a verb follows the pattern in present tense, it can still be an irregular verb, if it's different in other tenses. I will however not take care of that here, but simply use all verbs which follows the regular present tense pattern.
There is no difference with gender, persons, etc. when you're working with verbs, they're all using the same form of verb.

Some examples, using the pronouns we learned earlier:

• Jeg går => I walk
• Du holder => You hold
• Han drikker => He drinks
• Vi siger => We say
• I bærer => You (pl.) carry
• De flyver => They fly

(Red = Pronoun; Green = Verb)


Noun genders and articles
In Danish you have two genders: the common, and the neuter. The common gender is a mix of the masculine and feminine, known from other languages, rough said. This means you will only have to learn two genders. To make it even easier, just learn the neuter nouns. There's fewer neuter nouns than common nouns, so learning the neuter will be easier, and if you know that a noun isn't neuter, it must be common.

You use the articles, (-)en for common nouns, and (-)et for neuter nouns. The reason why you see the hyphen is because that in Danish the articles are both used in front of verbs, and as a postfix, depending on whether it's indefinite or definite.

When you're working with indefinite articles, you have to use en for common nouns, and et for neuter nouns. These are the equivalents to the English a and an. And they are, like the English articles, before a word.

• (c.) en bil = a car
• (n.) et papir = a paper
• (c.) en færge = a ferry
• (n.) et træ = a tree
• (c.) en pære = a pear
• (n.) et æble = an apple

(c. = common; n. = neuter)

The definite articles are harder to get used to for English or Spanish speakers, as like I mentioned, they're appended to the words in Danish. The -(e)n, and -(e)t, are equivalents to the English, the. If a word already ends on a vowel, you normally only have to append either -n, or -t. But it's not true for all words, so it's by no mean a rule.

• (c.) bilen => the car
• (n.) papiret => the paper
• (c.) færgen => the ferry
• (n.) træet => the tree
• (c.) pæren => the pear
• (n.) æblet => the apple

(c. = common; n. = neuter)

Forming the plurals are slightly more difficult, so I haven't covered them here.

Here's some examples using both the pronouns, verbs and nouns we have learned:

• Jeg kører bilen => I drive the car
• I bærer træet => You (pl.) carry the tree
• Han spiser et æble => He eats an apple

(Red = Pronoun; Green = Verb; Blue = Noun)


Numerals
The numbers from zero to twenty have all different names. But from twenty and onwards up to hundred, one pattern is used, and from hundred and onwards another pattern is used. We will start out by the first twenty numbers, including zero.

(0 ... 10) => nul, en, to, tre, fire, fem, seks, syv, otte, ni, ti
(11 ... 20) => elleve, tolv, tretten, fjorten, femten, seksten, sytten, atten, nitten, tyve

Now, to say the numbers between twenty and hundred, you first say the ones, followed by an and, and then the tens. It sounds difficult, but here's some examples to show that it isn't.

• 23: tre-og-tyve => three-and-twenty
• 34: fire-og-tredive => four-and-thirty
• 45: fem-og-fyrre => five-and-forty
• 56: seks-og-halvtreds => six-and-fifty

Note that the English translations are literal translations.

(30, 40, ... 80, 90) => tredive, fyrre, halvtreds, tres, halvfjerds, firs, halvfems

To say the hundreds, the thousands, and so on you follow another pattern. Instead of saying it "backwards" like with the tens up to hundred, you say them as you read the numbers visually.

• 100: et-hundrede => one-hundred
• 200: to-hundrede => two-hundred
• 3000: tre-tusinde => three-thousand
• 4000: fire-tusinde => four-thousand

Now you can combine them to form all numbers, basically. You start with the greatest unit, if we can say so. In the number 234, the hundreds will be the greatest unit. Note that between the different units if there's more of them (like thousands, and also hundreds), you shall not say and, but always between the last unit, hundreds, and then the tens, an and, shall be put in.
And if there's no hundreds, or other units between a greater unit (like in the number, 1001), you simply leave them out, and continue to the next unit.

• 123: et-hundrede-og-tre-og-tyve => one-hundred-and-three-and-twenty
• 1234: et-tusinde-to-hundrede-og-fire-og-tredive => one-hundred-two-thousand-and-four-and-thirty
• 3004: tre-tusinde-og-fire => three-thousand-and-four

The End
Here at the end I want to say, that I hope you've learned something from this small appetizer. Maybe you haven't thought about continuing learning Danish, but it's always good to have some understanding of various languages.
There's lots of things I haven't covered in this appetizer, and it would require a small book, if I should go in the depth and details with the whole Danish language, but after all, it was just an appetizer.

Enjoy, and thank you for reading it.


Update: You can find sample sentences in this post, and recordings of pronouns and verbs in this post.