Nogen vs Nogle (and Noget)

Danish has three closely related words for "some" and "any" — nogen, noget and nogle — and choosing the wrong one is one of the most common written errors made by learners and native speakers alike. The difficulty is double: you have to pick the right word for the grammatical context, and two of the three (nogen and nogle) are pronounced identically — both sound like "noen." That means your ear gives you no help in writing; you have to know the rule.

This page treats all three as determiners (words placed before a noun) and as the related indefinite pronouns. Get the underlying logic and the choice becomes mechanical.

The core split

Think of three questions, asked in order:

1. Is the noun mass or neuter singular? → noget (noget vand, noget brød).
2. Is the statement positive and the noun plural countable? → nogle (nogle biler, nogle venner).
3. Is it a question, a negation, or a singular countable? → nogen (nogen penge?, ikke nogen mælk, nogen bil).

In other words: nogle is the positive plural form, nogen is the question/negative/singular form, and noget is the mass/neuter form. English collapses all three into "some" (positive) and "any" (questions/negatives), so English speakers have no instinct for the nogle vs nogen split at all.

Nogle — "some" with a positive plural

Nogle means "some" before a plural countable noun in an affirmative statement. You are picking out an unspecified handful from a larger group.

Notice that nogle is inherently plural — it never appears before a singular noun. If you can replace the English "some" with "a few" and it still works, you want nogle.

Nogen — questions, negations, and the singular

Nogen covers two jobs. First, it is the "any/some" you use in questions and negative statements, regardless of whether the noun is singular or plural:

Second, nogen is the form before a singular countable noun meaning "any/some particular one," and it is the pronoun meaning "anybody/somebody":

So in Har du nogen penge? ("Do you have any money?"), even though penge is plural, the question context forces nogen, not nogle. This is the single most important thing to internalise: a question or a negation overrides the plural and gives you nogen.

Noget — mass nouns, neuter singulars, and "something"

Noget is the form for uncountable (mass) nouns and neuter (et-word) singulars, and it is the pronoun for "something / anything."

Because noget tracks gender, you will also see it before a neuter singular noun: noget brød ("some bread," et brød), noget arbejde ("some work," et arbejde). Before a common-gender (en-word) singular, you would normally reach for nogen instead: nogen mælk is possible, but with clearly uncountable common-gender nouns Danes very often still say noget mælk by treating the substance as a mass. When in doubt with a liquid, powder or abstract substance, noget is the safe choice.

Side-by-side

The homophone trap

Here is why this topic causes so much trouble. Nogle and nogen are spelled differently but pronounced the same — both come out as "noen." The silent -g- and the differing endings have collapsed in speech. So a Dane (or a learner) who writes by ear will guess, and roughly half the time guess wrong. Noget, by contrast, ends in a soft -d-like sound ("no'd") and is never confused with the other two by ear — only its determiner-vs-pronoun jobs need thinking about.

A reliable written test: try replacing the word with "a few." If "a few" fits, the noun is plural and countable, so in a positive statement you write nogle. If instead you would say "any" (because it is a question or negation), write nogen. If you would say "a bit of" or "some" with an uncountable thing, write noget.

How this differs from English

English uses just two indefinite quantifiers, some (for positive statements) and any (for questions and negatives), and neither one is sensitive to the singular/plural or mass/count distinction the way Danish is. "Do you have some apples?" and "Do you have any apples?" are both grammatical in English, with a slight nuance; in Danish the question forces nogen (Har du nogen æbler?), and nogle in a question would sound wrong to a native ear. English also has no equivalent of the nogle/nogen spelling split, because its words sound as different as they look. The upshot: you cannot transfer your English instinct here — you must learn the Danish triggers explicitly.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• nogle = "some" before a positive plural countable noun ("a few").
• nogen = "any/some" in questions and negations, before a singular, and as the pronoun "anybody."
• noget = "some/any" with mass nouns and neuter singulars, and as the pronoun "something."
• A question or negation flips a plural noun from nogle to nogen — the most-missed rule.
• nogle and nogen sound identical, so you can never rely on your ear in writing — apply the rule.