Like English, Danish splits nouns into two quantification classes: count nouns, which you can number and pluralise (en bil, to biler — "a car, two cars"), and mass (uncountable) nouns, which name an undivided substance and resist plurals (vand "water", not *vander). The two classes take different quantity words, and — the point English speakers most often miss — Danish forms partitive phrases like "a glass of water" without any preposition at all. This page covers the quantity words, the measure phrases, and the handful of nouns where Danish and English disagree about which class a noun belongs to.
The core split: meget vs mange, lidt vs få
The quantity words sort by class. With a mass noun you use meget ("much") for a large amount and lidt ("a little") for a small one. With a count noun you use mange ("many") and få ("few"). Choosing the wrong one is immediately ungrammatical to a Dane, just as "much cars" is to an English speaker.
| Large amount | Small amount | |
|---|---|---|
| Mass (singular) | meget vand (much water) | lidt vand (a little water) |
| Count (plural) | mange biler (many cars) | få biler (few cars) |
Der er meget trafik på Lyngbyvejen om morgenen.
There's a lot of traffic on Lyngbyvejen in the morning.
Vi har mange biler i garagen, men kun lidt plads.
We have many cars in the garage, but only a little room.
Der var meget få mennesker til mødet.
There were very few people at the meeting.
Notice that mass nouns stay singular with meget (meget vand, never *meget vande), while count nouns go plural with mange (mange biler). The number agreement is doing the same work the class distinction does in English.
The preposition-free partitive
In English, you portion out a mass noun with "of": a glass *of water, two cups **of coffee, a piece **of paper. Danish does this with *no preposition whatsoever. The measure word and the substance simply sit side by side.
| English | Danish (no "of") |
|---|---|
| a glass of water | et glas vand |
| two cups of coffee | to kopper kaffe |
| a piece of paper | et stykke papir |
| a bottle of wine | en flaske vin |
| a kilo of apples | et kilo æbler |
Må jeg bede om et glas vand?
Could I have a glass of water, please?
Hun drak to kopper kaffe, før hun overhovedet sagde noget.
She drank two cups of coffee before she said anything at all.
Ræk mig lige et stykke papir.
Hand me a piece of paper, would you.
This is one of the most persistent low-level errors English speakers make, precisely because it is so automatic in English to reach for "of" (af in Danish). Inserting af here — *et glas af vand — sounds distinctly foreign. The measure noun governs the count properties (it is et glas, neuter), and the substance noun follows bare.
Where Danish and English disagree
Class membership is mostly shared between the two languages, but a few nouns cross over, and these are the ones that catch you out.
Mass in English, count in Danish. Danish møbler "furniture" is a plural count noun — you can have et møbel (one piece of furniture) and mange møbler. English "furniture" is mass, so English speakers wrongly say *meget møbel.
Vi skal købe nogle nye møbler til stuen.
We need to buy some new furniture for the living room.
Der står alt for mange møbler i det lille værelse.
There's far too much furniture in that little room.
The information trap. This is the classic one. Danish does not use information as a singular count noun the way English does. For "a piece of information" / "a fact you tell someone", Danish uses the count noun en oplysning (plural oplysninger). Information exists but behaves as a mass noun.
Tak for de nyttige oplysninger.
Thanks for the useful information.
Jeg mangler én vigtig oplysning, før jeg kan udfylde skemaet.
I'm missing one important piece of information before I can fill in the form.
Mass in both, but watch the agreement. Nouns like brød (bread), ost (cheese), tid (time) and plads (room/space) are mass and take meget/lidt. But several have a count reading too: et brød is "a loaf", en ost is "a (whole) cheese", en tid is "an appointment". The substance reading is mass; the unit reading is count.
Har vi nok brød til i morgen?
Do we have enough bread for tomorrow?
Jeg har bestilt en tid hos lægen på torsdag.
I've booked an appointment with the doctor for Thursday.
Mass nouns have no plural
Because a mass noun names an undivided substance, it has no plural form. Vand has no *vander; mælk has no *mælker; sne (snow) has no *sneer. When you need to count, you reach for a measure phrase (to glas vand) or shift to the count sense (to vand in a café can mean "two waters" = two servings, exactly as in English).
Der lå sne overalt, men der var ikke meget vand i åen.
There was snow everywhere, but there wasn't much water in the stream.
Common mistakes
❌ Må jeg bede om et glas af vand?
Incorrect — English 'of' transferred as 'af'; the Danish partitive takes no preposition.
✅ Må jeg bede om et glas vand?
Correct — measure word + bare substance noun, no 'af'.
❌ Jeg drikker mange kaffe om dagen.
Incorrect — 'mange' is for count nouns; coffee as a substance is mass.
✅ Jeg drikker meget kaffe om dagen.
Correct — mass noun takes 'meget' and stays singular.
❌ Tak for den nyttige information.
Incorrect — Danish doesn't use 'information' as a singular count noun this way.
✅ Tak for den nyttige oplysning.
Correct — 'oplysning' is the count noun for a piece of information.
❌ Vi har meget møbel i stuen.
Incorrect — 'møbler' is count in Danish, so this needs 'mange'.
✅ Vi har mange møbler i stuen.
Correct — furniture is countable in Danish: et møbel, mange møbler.
❌ Der er for lidt biler på vejen i dag.
Incorrect — 'lidt' is for mass nouns; cars are countable.
✅ Der er for få biler på vejen i dag.
Correct — count nouns take 'få', not 'lidt'.
Key takeaways
- Mass nouns take meget / lidt and stay singular; count nouns take mange / få and go plural.
- The partitive has no preposition: et glas vand, to kopper kaffe — never *et glas af vand.
- Watch the cross-language defectors: møbler (count in Danish), and use en oplysning — not en information — for "a piece of information".
- Mass nouns have no plural; reach for a measure phrase or the count sense when you need to number them.
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