Quantity and Indefinite Adjectives | Danish Grammar

Words like much, all, many, few, and same sit on the border between adjective and determiner, and Danish treats them in two sharply different ways. Some of them agree with the noun — they change shape for gender and number just like ordinary adjectives. Others are completely invariable and never take an ending, even where you would swear one belongs. The trouble for learners is that nothing on the surface tells you which group a word is in, so the instinct to "make it agree" gets applied everywhere — including to the words that forbid it. This page sorts the two groups and gives you the cases worth memorizing.

The group that agrees

These quantity words inflect for gender and number on the same common/neuter/plural pattern as regular adjectives. The full al/hel system has its own al, hel and quantity page; here is the working overview.

al / alt / alle (all)

Form	Use	Example
al	common, uncountable	al maden (all the food)
alt	neuter, uncountable	alt arbejdet (all the work)
alle	plural, countable	alle børnene (all the children)

Han spiste al maden og drak alt vandet.

He ate all the food and drank all the water. (common 'al' + neuter 'alt')

Alle gæsterne kom til tiden.

All the guests arrived on time. (plural 'alle')

megen / meget (much)

Meget is the everyday neuter form and the one you will use constantly; the common-gender megen is now dated/formal and largely confined to writing and set phrases. Most speakers simply use meget or reach for en masse / en hel del instead.

Der er meget arbejde tilbage.

There's a lot of work left. (neuter 'meget' — the normal choice)

Med megen møje nåede de toppen.

With much effort they reached the top. (common 'megen' — formal/literary, dated in speech)

mange, få / færre, flere, andre, visse, sådan / sådanne

These behave like plural adjectives (and a couple have comparative forms). Mange (many), få (few) with comparative færre (fewer), flere (more/several), andre (other), visse (certain), and sådan/sådanne (such) all attach to plural nouns; sådan additionally has the singular sådan vs. plural sådanne split.

Der var mange mennesker, men få stole.

There were many people but few chairs. ('mange', 'få')

Vi har brug for flere frivillige og færre regler.

We need more volunteers and fewer rules. ('flere', 'færre')

Visse ting kan man ikke forklare, og sådanne spørgsmål lader vi ligge.

Certain things can't be explained, and such questions we leave alone. ('visse', plural 'sådanne')

Har du andre forslag?

Do you have other suggestions? ('andre')

The group that never inflects

Now the trap. Samme (same), næste (next), and forrige (previous) are completely invariable. They already end in -e, they look like weak adjectives, and learners reflexively try to "agree" them for neuter or do something to them in the plural — but they take no further ending at all, in any gender or number.

Vi tog samme tog og stod af ved samme station.

We took the same train and got off at the same station. ('samme' unchanged before neuter 'tog' and common 'station' alike)

Det samme problem dukker op hvert år.

The same problem comes up every year. ('samme' invariable even with neuter 'problem')

Vi ses i næste uge — eller var det forrige fredag, vi aftalte?

See you next week — or was it last Friday we agreed on? ('næste', 'forrige' both invariable)

De samme fejl, de samme undskyldninger.

The same mistakes, the same excuses. ('samme' unchanged in the plural)

💡

If a quantity word already ends in -e and feels "frozen" — samme, næste, forrige — leave it completely alone. There is no neuter form, no plural form, no genitive change. Touching it is the error.

Why the two groups split this way

The agreeing words (al, meget, mange, få) are quantifiers that still behave like adjectives describing how much — they participate in the gender/number system because they modify a quantity that itself has gender and number. The invariable words (samme, næste, forrige) are identity and sequence markers: they pick out which one — the same one, the next one, the previous one — rather than describing an amount. Because they identify rather than quantify, they sit closer to fixed determiners and have lost any inflection. Sorting your quantity words by this question — am I measuring an amount, or pointing at which one? — predicts the behaviour reliably.

For an English speaker the difficulty is the reverse of usual: English never inflects much/many/same/next for gender, so the temptation is to leave everything bare — which accidentally gets samme/næste/forrige right but botches al/alt/alle and sådan/sådanne. The fix is not "always agree" or "never agree" but learning which short list is frozen.

Common Mistakes

❌ Vi tog det sammet tog.

Incorrect — 'samme' never takes a neuter -t; it's invariable.

✅ Vi tog det samme tog.

We took the same train. — 'samme' unchanged.

❌ det næstet år

Incorrect — 'næste' takes no neuter -t (or any ending); it's frozen.

✅ det næste år

next year — 'næste' invariable even with neuter 'år'.

❌ Han drak al vandet.

Incorrect — 'vand' is neuter, so it needs the neuter 'alt', not common 'al'.

✅ Han drak alt vandet.

He drank all the water. — neuter 'alt'.

❌ Alt gæsterne kom.

Incorrect — countable plural needs 'alle', not 'alt'.

✅ Alle gæsterne kom.

All the guests came. — plural 'alle'.

❌ Der er mange arbejde tilbage.

Incorrect — uncountable neuter takes 'meget', not the plural 'mange'.

✅ Der er meget arbejde tilbage.

There's a lot of work left. — uncountable 'meget'.

Key takeaways

Agreeing: al / alt / alle (common / neuter / plural), meget (with the dated/formal megen), mange, få / færre, flere, andre, visse, sådan / sådanne.
Invariable: samme, næste, forrige — never take any ending, in any gender or number.
The split tracks meaning: words that measure an amount inflect; words that pick which one (identity/sequence) are frozen.
English speakers tend to under-agree; the real skill is memorizing the short frozen list and letting the rest agree normally.

Now practice Danish

Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.

Start learning Danish→