{"id":1087,"date":"2014-06-29T07:15:55","date_gmt":"2014-06-29T07:15:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/?p=1087"},"modified":"2015-02-14T18:50:47","modified_gmt":"2015-02-14T18:50:47","slug":"mind-your-inversion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/2014\/06\/29\/mind-your-inversion\/","title":{"rendered":"Mind your inversion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><div style=\"width: 266px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a title=\"By Ciro Duran from Caracas, Venezuela (Master Yoda) [CC-BY-2.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons\" href=\"http:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3AMaster_Yoda_-_origami.jpg\" aria-label=\"256px Master Yoda   Origami\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\"  alt=\"Master Yoda - origami\" width=\"256\" height=\"339\" \/ src=\"\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/c\/c3\/Master_Yoda_-_origami.jpg\/256px-Master_Yoda_-_origami.jpg\"><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">The sequence of words important is, yes!<\/p><\/div><br \/>\nDanish\u00a0grammar 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\u2026 \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s inversion in English too. To make a phrase like &#8220;you are happy&#8221; into a question, you simply make the subject and the verb switch places: Are you happy? (With other verbs than &#8220;to be&#8221; it gets more complicated, but let&#8217;s leave that for now.) As you know, Danish\u00a0make questions in the same way: <b>Du er glad<\/b> &gt; <b>Er du glad<\/b>?<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s make that last example negative: <b>Du er ikke glad<\/b> (You are not happy) &gt; <b>Er du ikke glad<\/b>? (Are you not happy?) Once again, Danish\u00a0and English are like two peas in a pod.<\/p>\n<p>Okay, let&#8217;s turn our example into a dependent clause:<\/p>\n<p><b>Du siger at du er glad.<\/b> (You say that you are happy. \u2013 As you maybe remember from school, a dependent clause is part of a main clause. &#8220;that you are happy&#8221; cannot stand on its own. <em>Note that the Danish phrase can also be written with a comma after &#8220;siger&#8221;: Du siger, at du er glad.<\/em>)<\/p>\n<p>And the negative one:<\/p>\n<p><b>Du siger at du <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">ikke<\/span> er glad.<\/b> (You say that you are <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">not<\/span> happy.)<\/p>\n<p>Finally we see the difference between the two languages. In Danish, the word &#8220;ikke&#8221; does a backwards summersault and places itself <i>in front of<\/i> the verb in dependent clauses: <b>Du er <\/b><b>ikke<\/b><b>\u2026<\/b> &gt; <b>Du siger at du <\/b><b>ikke<\/b><b> er\u2026<\/b><\/p>\n<p>The same goes for other words of the same kind, that is, <i>adverbs<\/i> that somehow influence the meaning of the whole sentence, such as <strong>tit<\/strong><b>\u00a0<\/b>(often), <b>aldrig\u00a0<\/b>(never), <b>altid<\/b> (always), <b>bare<\/b> (just):<\/p>\n<p><b>Han tager\u00a0<span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">tit<\/span>\u00a0til Fyn. <\/b>(He often goes to Funen.) &gt; <b>Jeg har h\u00f8rt at han <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">tit<\/span>\u00a0tager\u00a0til Fyn.<\/b> (I&#8217;ve heard that he often goes to Funen.)<\/p>\n<p><b>Hun s\u00e5 <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">bare<\/span>\u00a0tr\u00e6t ud<\/b><b>. <\/b>(She just looked tired.) <b>&gt; Det er hende der <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">bare<\/span> s\u00e5 tr\u00e6t ud<\/b><b>. <\/b>(It&#8217;s she\u00a0that just looked tired.)<\/p>\n<p><b>Du ringer <\/b><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\"><b>aldrig<\/b><\/span><b>. <\/b>(You never call.) &gt; <b>Jeg forst\u00e5r ikke hvorfor du <\/b><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\"><b>aldrig<\/b><\/span><b> ringer.<\/b> (I don&#8217;t understand why you never call.)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<img width=\"256\" height=\"339\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/30\/2014\/06\/256px-Master_Yoda_-_origami.jpg\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image tmp-hide-img\" alt=\"\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><p>Danish\u00a0grammar 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\u2026 \ud83d\ude42 There&#8217;s inversion in English too. To make a phrase like &#8220;you are&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"post-item__readmore\"><a class=\"btn btn--md\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/2014\/06\/29\/mind-your-inversion\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":2123,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[336331,13489],"class_list":["post-1087","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-grammar","tag-ikke","tag-inversion"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1087"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1194,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087\/revisions\/1194"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}