Learn about the Danish tenses
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Intro |
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| Antoni: How many tenses are there in Danish? |
| Anna Juul: And how do they work? |
| Antoni: At DanishClass101.com, we hear these questions often. Imagine the following situation: Sasha Lee is confused about the number of tenses in Danish. She asks her teacher, Maiken Mikkelsen, |
| "How many tenses are there in Danish?" |
| Sasha: Hvor mange tempusformer er der på dansk? |
| Dialogue |
| Sasha: Hvor mange tempusformer er der på dansk? |
| Maiken: Der er tre hovedformer. |
| Antoni: Once more with the English translation. |
| Sasha: Hvor mange tempusformer er der på dansk? |
| Antoni: "How many tenses are there in Danish?" |
| Maiken: Der er tre hovedformer. |
| Antoni: "There are three main tenses." |
Lesson focus |
| Antoni: In the dialogue, Maiken tells Sasha that, in Danish, there are three main tenses, or |
| Anna Juul: tre hovedformer. |
| Antoni: What are these tenses? Let’s go through them! The three main tenses of Danish are present, past, and future tense, but each of them also has a perfective version. |
| Anna Juul: So, in total, there are six tenses—præsens, præteritum, perfektum, pluskvamperfektum, futurum, and futurum perfektum. |
| Antoni: Now, how do these tenses work? How do we use them? Well, let’s briefly go through them one by one. Let’s start with |
| Anna Juul: præsens, |
| Antoni: the present tense. The present tense is used similarly to the present tense in English, and, obviously, the most common use of it is to explain things that are happening "now" in present time. Let’s look at an example. Let’s use the verb for "smile" as an example. The infinite form of "to smile" is |
| Anna Juul: smile. |
| Antoni: To conjugate it into the present form, we simply add an "r" to the infinitive form: |
| Anna Juul: smiler. |
| Antoni: Now, to say "I smile," you would say: |
| Anna Juul: Jeg smiler. |
| Antoni: Let’s move on to the preterite form, or, in Danish, |
| Anna Juul: præteritum, |
| Antoni: which is used for completed actions in the past. Unfortunately, there isn’t one single way to change all verbs into the preterite tense as this can vary between different verb forms, but, for regular verbs, the suffix will be either "-te," "-de," or "ede" to the infinitive form. In the case for the verb "smile," |
| Anna Juul: smile |
| Antoni: its preterite tense is: |
| Anna Juul: smilte. |
| Antoni: "I smiled" is therefore: |
| Anna Juul: Jeg smilte. |
| Antoni: Moving on to the perfect tense, or |
| Anna Juul: perfektum, |
| Antoni: where we have to combine the verb for "have," |
| Anna Juul: har |
| Antoni: in its present tense, and then the verb in its supine verb form. How do we figure out the supine verb form? Well, in the case of the verb "smile," we simply add a "-t" to the infinitive form, as in: |
| Anna Juul: smilt. |
| Antoni: Therefore, we find the perfect tense by adding this supine form to the verb "have". To say "I have smiled" is: |
| Anna Juul: Jeg har smilt. |
| Antoni: Tenses are truly something to learn slowly over time, so don’t worry if you have to go through this a few times. The good news is that the next two tenses are comparatively easy. To figure out the pluperfect tense, or |
| Anna Juul: pluskvamperfektum, |
| Antoni: we simply use the same supine form as we used for the perfect tense; |
| Anna Juul: smilt. |
| Antoni: The only difference is that, this time, we say the verb for "have" in its past tense, that is, its preterite tense, which would be: |
| Anna Juul: havde. |
| Antoni: Therefore, to say "I had smiled," you simply say: |
| Anna Juul: Jeg havde smilt. |
| Antoni: The future tense, or |
| Anna Juul: futurum, |
| Antoni: is used to describe things that will happen in the future. To use a verb in its future tense, we don’t have to change the verb form from its infinitive form. Instead, we simply add the verb for "will," or |
| Anna Juul: vil |
| Antoni: in front of it. So, to say "I will smile," you simply say: |
| Anna Juul: Jeg vil smile. |
| Antoni: Alternatively, if the subject has a plan or purpose, we add the verb for "shall," or |
| Anna Juul: skal. |
| Antoni: So, to say "I shall smile," it's: |
| Anna Juul: Jeg skal smile. |
| Antoni: Finally, the preterite future tense, or |
| Anna Juul: futurum perfektum, |
| Antoni: is used to describe things that were planned to happen, or went on in the past but after another action. This time, we say the verb for "will" in its past tense, "would," which in Danish is: |
| Anna Juul: ville, |
| Antoni: or "shall" in its past tense, "should," |
| Anna Juul: skulle |
| Antoni: in front of the verb. So to say "I would smile," it's: |
| Anna Juul: Jeg ville smile. |
| Antoni: And, similarly, "I should smile" would be: |
| Anna Juul: Jeg skulle smile. |
| [SUMMARY] |
| Antoni: In this lesson, we learned that Danish has three tenses with an additional perfective form for each of them. We also learned how to conjugate the verbs. |
| We had the example of "smile" where we added "-te," to express the preterite tense in Danish |
| Anna Juul: smilte. |
| Antoni: In addition to this, we also learned that the preterite tense of regular verbs can have the suffixes "-de" or "-ede". Let’s have a look at the verb "work" |
| Anna Juul: arbejde. |
| Antoni: Its preterite tense is: |
| Anna Juul: arbejdede. |
| Antoni: Let’s run through the tenses we learned |
| Antoni: Present: "I work" |
| Anna Juul: præsens: Jeg arbejder. |
| Antoni: Preterite: "I worked." |
| Anna Juul: præteritum: jeg arbejdede. |
| Antoni: Present Perfect: "I have worked." |
| Anna Juul: perfektum: Jeg har arbejdet. |
| Antoni: Pluperfect: "I had worked." |
| Anna Juul: pluskvamperfektum: Jeg havde arbejdet. |
| Antoni: Future: "I will work." |
| Anna Juul: futurum: Jeg vil arbejde. |
| Antoni: Preterite future: "I would work." |
| Anna Juul: futurum perfektum: Jeg ville arbejde. |
Outro |
| Antoni: Do you have any more questions? We’re here to answer them! |
| Anna Juul: Farvel! |
| Antoni: See you soon! |
| Credits: Anna Maria Juul (Danish, Denmark), Antoni (English, synthetic voice) |
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