Danish is often described as having ten word classes: verbs, nouns, pronouns, numerals, adjectives, adverbs, articles, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections.
Unlike English, definite nouns in Danish are rendered by adding a suffix (i.e. not an article) to the indefinite form (unless qualified by an adjective; see below).
The following table shows the possible inflections of regular Danish nouns of both grammatical genders.
"car""woman""boy""shoe" "tree""apple""flash of lightning" "chamber" The most common plural ending is -er.
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").
Here are some examples: "man""goose""tooth""hand""toe""book""farmer""cow""drink""Academy Award""jalapeño""risk" "child""board""onomato-poietic" Most either have vowel change with or without a suffix, or are foreign words using their native plurals.
For example, the phrases kongen af Danmark's bolsjefabrik, "the king of Denmark's candy factory", or det er pigen Uffe bor sammen meds datter "that is the girl Uffe lives with's daughter", where the enclitic attaches to a stranded preposition.
[5][6] 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.
[1] The personal pronouns in Danish has three cases: nominative, oblique (accusative and dative), and possessive (or genitive).
However, until the beginning of the twentieth century, it was normal to inflect the present tense in number in educated prose.
The second, called strong verbs, forms the past tense with a zero ending and, in most cases, certain vowel changes.
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".
c. Unreal situation in present time: Hvis Peter købte kage, lavede Anne kaffe.
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.
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.
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".
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".
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 tedious", der var en løben og råben på gangene, "people ran and cried in the hall".
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.
This system is similar to that of German and Dutch (zweiundvierzig, zweihundertfünfundsiebzig), but unlike that of Swedish (fyrtiotvå, tvåhundrasjuttiofem).
The definite e-form is historically identical to the so-called weak declension of the Germanic adjective, cf.
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.
When used as a predicate, the basic form is used instead of the e-form: hans ben er længst "his legs are the longest".
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.