Some grammar, the nouns, more about the pronunciation and what’s going on in the kitchen?
Danish Nouns
Nouns are words used to name people, animals, places, things or abstract ideas. Along with verbs nouns are the most important part of the glossary. Here are some examples:
en banan (banana)
et hus (house)
en stegepande
et værksted (garage)
en blyant (pencil)
et sneglehus (snail shell)
As you can see Danish have two indefinite articles, en or et (for the English a/an). Unfortunately, there are no handy rules telling you which suffix to choose. You have to memorize it and learn it by heart.
The definite articles (English the) is added to the indefinite form:
en bil
bilen
en giraf
giraffen
et telefonopkald
telefonopkaldet
et glas
glasset
Danish nouns in sentences
Hun har en kat
katten løb væk (ran away)
Bitten spiser et æble (Bitten eats an apple)
æblet er saftigt (juicy)
Plural, indefinite and definite In Danish plural is commonly formed by changing the ending of the noun.
The most frequent is - er, and many new words take this ending. So, when in doubt, try - er!
Some common nouns in this category include:
en sky
to skyer (two clouds)
en maskine
to maskiner (two machines)
en bus
to busser (two busses)
As you can see in the word maskine, the final ”-e” is merged into the ending. Also, the ending may cause a final consonant to be reduplicated in writing, for example bus becomes busses in plural.
The second most common way to form a plural is -e
en hest
to heste (horses)
en dag
to dage (days)
et hus
to huse (houses)
en hund
to hunde ’dog(s)’
No ending
A handful of words take no ending at all in the plural – just like ”one fish – two fish, one sheep two sheep ” in English.
en film
to film (films)
en sten
to sten (stones)
et ord
et ord (words)
et bål
et bål ’bonfire(s)’
And as in English (one footh, two feet/tooth-teeth) some nouns in this category tend to change the vowel: en mand flere mænd, et barn flere børn.
And finally, it has become more and more frequent to use the English -s plural, which sneaks into the Danish language through loanwords:
et job
to jobs
en mail
to mails
en hotdog
to hotdogs
et band
to bands
The plural of a definite noun is formed by tagging – (e)ne to the indefinite plural, like this:
indefinite plural
definite plural
Skyer
skyerne
bands
bandsene
maskiner
maskinerne
sten
stenene
stole
stolene
The Genitive
The Genitive in Danish Grammar is an essential aspect of the language that allows speakers to convey possession and relationships between nouns ad an -s: mandens huse, husets tag, pigens æble, æblets smag. In case the nouns has a phonetic -s-ending (s, x, z), you ad an apostrof: Det er Hans’ bil. Kristian er Alex’ kæreste.
Vowels and consonants – a soft language
A vocalic sound allows the air to flow freely through your mouth without any kind of constriction. The tongue does not touch the teeth, lips or the roof of the mouth.
A consonant sound is on the contrary articulated with complete or partial closure of the flow that the vowels create. Modern Standard Danish has a very large vowel inventory comprising around 9 phonemically distinctive vowels, with both short and long counterparts. Danish is therefore considered to be one of the softest and most gentle languages in the world. Depending on what your native language is, it might take you a bit of effort to learn to pronounce the vocalic sounds natively correct, since some of the vowels lie very close to each other phonetically.
Smile or kiss!
The different Danish vowels are formed either in the front, somewhere in the middle or in the back of the mouth. Your lips are more or less opened and more or less rounded (smile or kiss).
The system looks like this:
unrounded
rounded
rounded
front
central
back
closed
i
lime
y
lyse
u
luge
e
elske
ø
løse
u
orne
æ
æble
ö
örken
å
tåle
a
tale
ɔ
kommer
open
ɑ
aften
let’s practice:
i:
mide, lide, glide, kilde, mit
e:
mele, lede, bed, led
æ:
mæle, glæde, mæt, væske
a:
tale, gade, salat
ɑ:
har, kaffe, klar
y:
lyne, nyde, syden
ø:
tønde, øve, løfte
ö:
høne. løn, bønne
u:
luge, hule. lus
o:
ko, pose, mose
å:
låne, tåle, ål
ɔ:
løber, tårer, cykler
To the vowels above you can add ə, a short, muffled, “lazy” vowel called schwa made while relaxing the mouth. ə appears in the end of many words: tale, lede, kage, lege and it is also very common in English, for example smile.
Consonants
The Danish consonant system consists of stops, fricatives, lateral, nasals and semivowels. The stops, p, t, k, b, d, g, as the name says, breaks the flow of the air coming from the lounges. The fricatives, f, s, h, v less and lateral l, nasal m, n, ŋ lesser still and the semivowels nearly not at all. The Danish accent tendes to slur soft consonants.
Talk like a dane
