How many cases (nominative, accusative, etc.) are there in Danish?

Question

I am attempting to learn Danish on my own, but the books I have read so far do not actually tell me so much about the cases and how they work in the Danish language.

If it's not too much trouble, could you also please list and explain how the cases work? Examples too perhaps?

If you like or need to, you could refer to German cases to aid in the examples as I know German already because I have noticed the similarities between German and Danish already.

Any other information would also be helpful as I only have learned the very basics of Danish so far...

Thank you!

Answer 1

Nominative, accusative, and dative cases all become one in Danish. You don't distinguish between them as you do in German which is pretty sweet because you don't have to worry about if you're saying "the" or "a" the right way. There is only a genitive ending in Danish, and basically you just add an 's' onto the end of the word, but sometimes if there is already an 'e' on the end of a noun, you have to add 'rs' to the word. I think that Icelandic and Faroese are the only Scandinavian languages that have the same four cases as German, and once you get better at Danish, you can speak Bokmål too, but I think that the accent is just a little different than the Danish accent. You will also be able to understand Nynorsk and Swedish supposedly, but I haven't tried that because I don't know anyone who speaks those other languages. Actually, you're like the 4th person I've ever met who speaks (or tries) Danish, but I have seen "Casino Royale" and one of the actors is Danish.

There are 3 main rules about German word order besides SVO word order which I bet you know already because you said you know German. The rules are (1) infinitives and participles go to the end of the clause, (2) inversion unless the first element in the sentence is the subject (verb moves go the beginning), and (3) the verb goes to the end in subordinate clauses. Rule 1 hardly ever applies to Danish, and rule 3 has been modified and applies more frequently than rule 1, but still not too much. Rule 2 is in full swing in Danish though!

So, here is an example for rule 1:
English: I have SEEN him there.
German: Ich habe ihn dort GESEHEN.
Danish: Jeg har SET ham der.
The verb is in caps to emphasize that rule.

One for rule 2:
English: Yesterday HE DID not come.
German: Gestern KAM ER nicht.
Danish: I går KOM HAN ikke.
I emphasized certain parts again to show how German is different, and I just want to point out that sometimes inversions exist in English too, but very, insanely rarely.

Example for rule 3:
English: (main clause here) ... because it WAS too late.
German: ... weil es zu spät WAR.
Danish: ... fordi det VAR for sent.
For rule 3's example, the Danish verb is placed the same as in English, but with some adverbs (usually negatives), they change places with the verb and will then have to go to the end of it. Here's an example of what I'm trying to say:
English: He COULD NOT come.
Danish: Han KUNNE IKKE komme.
~~~becomes:~~~
English: He said that he COULD NOT come.
Danish: Han sagde, at han IKKE KUNNE komme.
I hope that makes sense; I can't think of another way to explain it because I don't know a lot of the terminology because I'm not an English or other language major at college, only a German minor. I learned Danish on my own too, and my grandma's friend helped me with some of the pronunciations when I was younger, and that's why I can't explain some of these things so well.

But let me tell you some main things about Danish pronunciations. The 'th' sound in English becomes just 't' and occasionally 'd' (like with "de" which means "they"). 'P,' 't' and 'k' become 'b,' 'd' and 'g' after stressed vowels.

One last thing that you probably already know, but just in case, Danish has two genders to worry about instead of three like in German! They're called the common and neuter genders. I was taught that the common gender in Danish basically just combined the masculine and feminine genders. I think that if you look at the history of Old English and Old Norse, you'll see that the two were once very close, and the evolution of those languages is similar too as demonstrated by the fact that English and Scandinavian languages don't require speakers to distinguish between nom, acc, and dat cases nor do speakers have to worry about the genders nearly as much as they did back in the day. German still has those little issues, and I think that you'll have a pretty easy time with Danish since you already know English and German. I hope that this helps you and that it makes sense because I know I babbled a lot and I have trouble explaining these things sometimes. Also, if it isn't clear enough already, I'm not really fluent in Danish. I studied it a long time ago with a native speaker, she passed away, and then I haven't studied it as much as I should. I actually just started studying it much more intensely recently, and I hope I am telling you the right things. If you need any more help, you can e-mail me. I'm happy that I finally found someone else who is trying out Danish!

Answer 2

There are no case declensions in Danish nouns, except the genitive, which is normally applied as an -s ending, or simply with an apostrophe when the noun ends with an s already. Pigens hus ("the girl's house"); et hus' beboere ("the inhabitants of a house"). Thus, one does not distinguish between persons and things in the genitive, as in English. The order of the genitive and the governed word is always the same as in English.

When the noun governed by the genitive can be considered part of the governing noun physically, the genitive is often replaced by a prepositional phrase, e.g. låget på spanden "the lid of the bucket", bagsiden af huset "the back of the house" rather than spandens låg, husets bagside, which are not incorrect but more formal.

Older case forms exist as relics in phrases like i live "alive" (liv = "life"), på tide "in due time" (tid = "time"), på fode "on his foot" (fod = "foot"). Similarly, the genitive is used in certain fossilised prepositional phrases (with til "to"): til fods "on foot", til vands/søs "by water/sea", gå til hånde "assist" (hånde being an old genitive plural of hand "hånd", now replaced by hænders).