Archive for 'Grammar'
Strong verbs are not random Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Aug 27, 2015
It’s time to take a look at grammatik (grammar) again. (I bet you’ve savnet – missed – it!) If you … a certain kind of very active words, you can hardly … a sentence. In other words: Verbs are a necessary evil! :-] Kaja spiser en is. Per spiste en is. Ungerne har spist en…
Big and Small Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Feb 28, 2015
Vi har hvad vi skal ha’, af både stort og småt! (We’ve got what we need, of both big and small!) Danish ”national oldie popdreng (pop boy)” Kim Larsen sings in one of his classic hits. I guess it’s still true that people in Denmark have got all the material ting (things) they need, but…
Talking about the future Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Jan 8, 2015
2015 is upon us, so I thought it would be a great idea to look a bit ahead – grammatically speaking, that is! As you may be aware, verbs in Spanish and Esperanto and many other languages have a distinct future tense (yo cantaré/mi kantos = I’ll sing). In English, we’ve got to make compound…
Mind your inversion Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Jun 29, 2014
Danish grammar has a tiny detail that always gives away foreigners: Inversion. That basically means that in some situations you have to change the word order, and if you forget to do that in those situations, well, then you sound like a foreigner… 🙂 There’s inversion in English too. To make a phrase like “you are…
Danish Noun Phrases for Dummies Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Apr 30, 2014
Fuglen synger. Bussen kører. (The bird is singing. The bus is driving.) An awful lot of phrases consist of a noun phrase + a verbal phrase. Danish verbal phrases are a piece of cake: Er, for example, means both am, is and are; snakker can be translated as talk, talks and am/is/are talking. Noun phrases…
Lazy phrases Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Dec 22, 2013
Kan du tale dansk? (”Can you speak Danish?”) Danish and English are related languages. As your study of Danish progresses, you’ll see that there are a lot of things that you already ”kind of know” when it comes to grammar and vocabulary. Nevertheless, the language does have at least one grammatical feature that does not…
4 Easy Ways to Become Posted by Bjørn A. Bojesen on Nov 29, 2013
You’ve already learnt how to say that you are something. Unlike English verbs (I am, you are, she is), the Danish ”action words” don’t care who’s doing the action (or who’s being!) So, it could hardly be any easier: jeg (I) er/var/har været/havde været – or whoever or whatever is/was/has been/had been. However, just being…