Modal Particles in Danish 

Great! Good luck 😉

Ja det er et super interessant emne, og virkelig en udfordring for folk der har et modersmål hvor man ikke bruger modalpartikler, eller hvor man i hvert fald ikke bruger dem så meget som på dansk. Mange tak for din kommentar :)

@@MicsLanguages I guess I'm fortunate that Russian also employs a ton of modal particles, so intuitively it makes sense to have them. I never noticed, until now, that English doesn't have any. It has modal adverbs, but that's as close as it gets.

Oh, that's interesting. The use of si makes sense to me there. In Portuguese you could do something similar with the word sim. But portuguese doesn't have two words like French (si and oui), as you wrote earlier. Thanks, interesting information :)

So interesting! Because "jo" also means "si" in french in another way: when correcting positively a negative affirmation. e.g. "-Tu n'as pas brossé tes dents. -Si! J'ai brossé mes dents!"

Tusind tak for din søde kommentar, Anees 😊

Germán is also full of them

@@MicsLanguages Yes, you reminded me of that. Thank you. The modal particals in German I didn't view as particals anymore. Oh, I just saw this video. Thought it might interest you. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-eI5DPt3Ge_s.html

Swedish and Danish are kind of the same language, especially written. But we pronounce the words very differently. You can absolutely get used to it and understand Danish as a Swede, but it is not as seamless as Swedish and Norwegian where the pronunciation is almost the same. This is maybe not an answer. Danes and Swedes can understand each other like in the tv-series, but maybe not every Dane understand a Swede and vice versa. In Mics examples ”jo” is in Swedish ”ju”, ”da” is ”då” (cognate in English ”then”), ”nok” is ”nog” in Swedish (cognate with English ”enough”), ”altså” is ”alltså”, ”vel” is ”väl” (cognate with English ”well”), ”mon” is ”månne”. The words are the same and they mean the same in Swedish and Danish. We don’t use them exactly the same way, but its easy to understand how a dane build a sentence anyway as a Swede and vice versa, because the words mean the same thing.

Jeg kan ikke lade være 😁

Thanks for your input. I'm afraid I have to disagree. Is it really the modal particle that makes the word "er" disappear? Think about these sentences: Det er klart! Der er mange! Så er det nu! Most of us wouldn't pronounce "er" here either, would we? Even though there is no modal particle. But thanks for writing anyway and giving it some thought!

Mange tak! Dejligt at høre that it was helpful and that you consider watching it again to get more details. Og tusind tak for dine positive ord om my example sentences 😊🙂😁

Yeah I also don't think I live made it yet. I guess I should put it more towards the top of my list now that you ask about it several times :)

We use them rarely on the E. For example in the word idé (=idea), it is possible to use it. But ide is also correct. Another place where we use it, is on the word én, when we want to make clear that we mean the number one, and not the article "a". én person = one person vs. en person = a person In this particular video, I don't remember how I used dér, but the accent can be used to show that we mean the long form of the word der vs. the short form.

Os is not a particle. I presume it's the word "også" (=also), which we pronounce like "os". The other possibility is the pronoun os (=us). Which one do you think it is?

Hej Ricardo! Interessant forslag. Hvis du skriver "kunne lide" og "synes om" i infinitiv, så bør du også skrive "bryde sig om" og "sætte pris på". Jeg skriver dit forslag på min liste!

og det "vel?" du bruger i slutningen skal være "ikke?" Men det lyder faktisk ikke så godt her. Det er nok bedst at udelade ordet "ikke" her.

Massa! Obrigado pelo carinho, Isabelle! :)

Mange tak!

Hej Sigga! Godt at se dig her 🙂 Jeg har det rigtig fint, tak. Håber også at du og din familie har det godt! 😉

Haha. De to sprog har jo meget til fælles, så måske har du ret 🤔

Tak, jeg har tilføjet det til min liste

I would say that wohl is more like vel in Danish. - Hvor ved han det fra? - Han har vel spurgt hende? = - Woher weiß er das? - Er hat sie wohl gefragt? Nok might be more like schon. Det skal nok gå. = Das wird schon. Das wird schon gehen. Modal particles are not always easy to translate one to one, especially because their meaning is a bit diffuse. In some cases nok might easily mean wohl, as you say. Feel free to write me any specific examples you could think of.

@@MicsLanguages Thanks so much! On Netflix I also constantly hear "godt" and it must be modal as I can't see the literal meaning.

Is it "godt" used inside sentences, or as a kind of exclamation? Inside sentences it of course means good and well, but it also is used as an affirmative word, as opposed to "ikke" (not). For example, suppose we are starting a Zoom call, I can say: "Jeg kan ikke høre dig, men jeg kan godt se dig." As an exclamation, it can mean something along the lines "well, let's move on. What's the next step in resolving the crime...?" Does this make sense?

@@MicsLanguages So is godt also a modal particle if it is often not translated into English at all?

Yes, in some cases I would definitely say it's a modal particle. For example the sentence I gave you with "jeg kan godt se dig" Another example "vil du ikke godt hjælpe mig?" Won't you please help me. Here the word please kind of expresses the same thing that godt does.

Thank you very much for the nice words! 🙂

Haha 😁 Både danske modalpartikler og verdenssituationen er indviklede, uden tvivl ;)

That's great. Thank you :)

Hahaha, yeah, you got it! 😉 I still wonder, but I don't have much faith in all those things any more. 😒

Oh yeah, dog is also a nice word. It means several things, and I wouldn't be able to list all its meanings without thinking about it for some time. I'm your example, I would say it has a similar meaning to "men", it is used to contrast sth. with sth. else. Often, dog means the same as men, but the syntax is different. John har boet i DK i 5 år. Men han taler ikke dansk. means the same as (or at least 99 per cent the same as): John har boet i DK i 5 år. Han taler dog ikke dansk. So, since in your sentence they use both men and dog, I would say it just makes it a bit stronger. And at the same time the sentence in this particular case just sounds better with men AND dog than it would with only one of the two words, even though having only men or dog is also totally correct in this situation.

@@MicsLanguages thank you! The sentence is from the movie A Fortunate Man, by the way

Ah cool, how did you like the movie? I haven't watched it (yet?) 🙂

Whether a plural noun has -e or -er is often something you learn by heart. But you can generally say, if the singular ends in -e, the plural will be -er. For example lampe, lamper, taske, tasker. Generally, if the singular ends in a consonant, the plural is -e (but only generally).

@@MicsLanguages Dreng in plural form is drenge which leads to drengene without the R while kvinde in plural form is kvinder and therefore, because of the R, leads to kvindERNE. So Kvinde ends with a vocal so thats why it leads to -ER as i understand from your answer. And dreng ends with a consonant so that leads to -e -ene. hest, heste, hestene. (consonant) Kilde, kilder, kilderne (vocal) elefant, elefanter, elefanterne. (consonant but still -er appelsin, appelsiner, appelsinerne (consonant but still -er. So there are obviously exceptions concerning elefant and appelsin. And that means that you simply just have to learn them by yourself since there is no clear rule?

Exactly, you got it! The "rules" I gave you are very general and have lots of exceptions. And apart from that, there are also lots of irregular plural forms, fx et kort, to kort, en mand, to mænd, et ben, to ben. So the rules are there to help, so you can make an educated guess for a word where you are not sure, but they will not always work.

Hi! With this super Danish name it sounds like you should know 😉 But since you ask, I suppose that you seriously don't speak Danish. Then you at least have one Danish parent, right? The word "dog" in this sentence means something like "really", "this is really unbelievable". The speaker might express a sense of irritation with another person, for example a parent annoyed at a child that repeatedly does something "wrong". That's at least the situation that first comes to mind when I see this sentence out of context. I hope this makes sense to you :)

man tænker jo heller ikke over hvordan partikler generelt bliver brugt heller. jeg kan i hvert fald ikke huske det blev lært tilbage i folkeskolen...

Ja, det er et super interessant emne. Man tager ofte den slags facetter af sit eget sprog for givet. Det er fascinerende når man først bliver opmærksom på alle de forskellige danske modalpartikler. De er forholdsvis svære at forstå på et kognitivt plan. Selvom vi alle sammen godt ved hvordan de skal bruges. Jeg tror at de her ting som er mere frekvente i talesproget og mindre i skriftsproget ofte bliver behandlet som mindreværdige og derfor ikke er et emne i fx folkeskolen. Det er interessant at høre at du kan se ligheder mellem dansk og japansk. Jeg kan desværre intet japansk overhovedet, men jeg har før hørt eller læst at partikler er en vigtig del af det japanske sprog. En anden ting de to sprog har til fælles er "stød". Det er i hvert fald sådan det lyder når man hører japansk. Som om alle ord har stød. God fornøjelse med dine japanskstudier og tak for din kommentar!