{"id":896,"date":"2013-03-08T00:09:34","date_gmt":"2013-03-08T00:09:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/?p=896"},"modified":"2013-03-08T00:09:34","modified_gmt":"2013-03-08T00:09:34","slug":"4-easy-ways-to-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/2013\/03\/08\/4-easy-ways-to-be\/","title":{"rendered":"4 Easy Ways To Be"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"width: 330px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a title=\"Du er CMYK by mikkelmarius, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/mikkelwinther\/4893622315\/\" aria-label=\"4893622315 5ccb12fa44 N\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\"  alt=\"Du er CMYK\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" \/ src=\"https:\/\/farm5.staticflickr.com\/4078\/4893622315_5ccb12fa44_n.jpg\"><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">For those who don\u2019t read Russian letters \u2013 SMUK means \u201dbeautiful\u201d!<\/p><\/div>\n<p>It\u2019s been a while since I last talked to you about <strong>grammatik<\/strong> ([gramaTICK], grammar). For some learners, that\u2019s more or less a necessary evil. I always say that learning grammar can be just as <strong>sjovt<\/strong> ([shorwt], fun) as exploring the culture or learning vocabulary. Let\u2019s talk about <strong>at v\u00e6re<\/strong> (to be).<\/p>\n<p>One of the first Danish words you\u2019ll encounter, is the present tense <strong>er<\/strong> (am, are, is). It\u2019s pronounced somewhere between British English <em>air<\/em> and <em>are<\/em> (but closer to <em>air<\/em>):<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeg er bare <em>s\u00e5<\/em> glad!<\/strong> (I\u2019m just so happy!)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Hvem er du?<\/strong> (Who\u2019re you?)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Min familie er p\u00e5 rejse i udlandet.<\/strong> (My family is on holiday\/travelling abroad.)<\/p>\n<p><strong>De er i Gr\u00e6kenland.<\/strong> (They\u2019re in Greece.)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Let, ikke?<\/strong> (Easy, huh?) In order to make questions, you just move <strong>er<\/strong> up front:<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Er du hende fra Canada?<\/strong> (Are you \u201dher\u201d [= that girl] from Canada?)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Er I klar?<\/strong> (Are you ready?)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Er han stadig hjemme?<\/strong> (Is he still at home?)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Negative phrases are made by inserting the little word <strong>ikke<\/strong> right behind <strong>er<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Nej, jeg er ikke hende fra Canada.<\/strong> (No, I\u2019m not that girl from Canada.)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Nej, han er ikke hjemme i dag.<\/strong> (No, he\u2019s not at home today)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>When making questions, the word <strong>ikke<\/strong> stays at its place!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Er han ikke hjemme i sin lejlighed?<\/strong> (Isn\u2019t he at home in his apartment?)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>Stuck in the past<\/h2>\n<p>The past tense works in the same way. You just replace <strong>er<\/strong> by <strong>var<\/strong> (was, were)!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Hvor var du i g\u00e5r?<\/strong> (Where were you yesterday?)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Hun var ikke kunstmaler i 1997.<\/strong> (She wasn\u2019t a painter\/artist in 1997.)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>Has been, had been\u2026<\/h2>\n<p>When you want to tell people where or what you <em>have been<\/em>, the words to use are <strong>har v\u00e6ret<\/strong> [har VARE-th]. In the past, that\u2019s <strong>havde v\u00e6rt<\/strong> ([ha-th VARE-th], had been). It all works pretty much as in English:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Amalie har v\u00e6ret alene p\u00e5 Nordpolen.<\/strong> (Amalie has been alone on the North Pole.)<\/p>\n<p><strong>De havde aldrig v\u00e6ret i Skagen.<\/strong> (They had never been to Skagen.)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>V\u00e6r forsigtig!<\/h2>\n<p>Be careful!<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>There\u2019s no direct way to say <em>I am waiting\u2026<\/em> or <em>Are you coming?<\/em> in Danish. Instead, you just say <strong>Jeg venter\u2026<\/strong> (I wait) and <strong>Kommer du?<\/strong> (Come you?)<\/li>\n<li>Very often when telling <em>where<\/em> something is (located), Danes will use the words <strong>ligger<\/strong> (lie[s]), <strong>sidder<\/strong> (sit[s]) or <strong>st\u00e5r<\/strong> (stand[s])<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><strong>Fredericia ligger i Jylland.<\/strong> (Fredericia is in Jutland.)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeg sidder i stuen!<\/strong> (I\u2019m in the living room!)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Vinen st\u00e5r i skabet.<\/strong> (The wine is in the cupboard.)<\/p>\n<p>3. In casual speech, <strong>er<\/strong> is often dropped entirely. To show this tendency in writing, an apostrophe is used. So, if you get an SMS with the text <strong>Du\u2019 s\u00f8d<\/strong>, and I tell you <strong>s\u00f8d<\/strong> means \u201dsweet\u201d, you should know what they mean! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 330px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a title=\"Hvem er sej? by nidhug, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/nidhug\/5712072905\/\" aria-label=\"5712072905 32a8626e7a N\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\"  alt=\"Hvem er sej?\" width=\"320\" height=\"215\" \/ src=\"https:\/\/farm3.staticflickr.com\/2576\/5712072905_32a8626e7a_n.jpg\"><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">You\u2019 cool!<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<img width=\"320\" height=\"240\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/30\/2013\/03\/4893622315_5ccb12fa44_n.jpg\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image tmp-hide-img\" alt=\"\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><p>It\u2019s been a while since I last talked to you about grammatik ([gramaTICK], grammar). For some learners, that\u2019s more or less a necessary evil. I always say that learning grammar can be just as sjovt ([shorwt], fun) as exploring the culture or learning vocabulary. Let\u2019s talk about at v\u00e6re (to be). One of the first&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"post-item__readmore\"><a class=\"btn btn--md\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/2013\/03\/08\/4-easy-ways-to-be\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":1434,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[4326,138,2574],"class_list":["post-896","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-grammar","tag-being","tag-slang","tag-to-be"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896","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=896"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":902,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896\/revisions\/902"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}