Danish Pronouns: An Overview

Pronouns are the small words that stand in for people and things — I, you, he, it, them. Danish has almost the same inventory English does, and for an English speaker that is good news: most of the system will feel familiar. But three features will trip you up if you do not see them coming, so this page maps the whole landscape first and flags the two famous traps up front, leaving the details to the pages that follow.

The one thing Danish kept that English mostly lost

Modern English has thrown away grammatical case almost everywhere. The dog looks identical whether the dog is doing the biting or being bitten — only word order tells you which. The one corner where English still marks case is its pronouns: we say I but me, he but him, they but them.

Danish works exactly the same way, and to the same limited extent. Danish nouns lost their case endings centuries ago — hunden (the dog) is hunden whether it bites or is bitten. But the pronouns held onto a two-way contrast: a subject form (the doer) and an object form (everything else — direct object, indirect object, and the complement of a preposition).

The full personal-pronoun table

Here is the entire system in one place. Learn this table and you have the backbone of Danish pronouns.

A few things to notice immediately. The two "it" rows — den and det — never change between subject and object; they are case-invariant. And the second-person plural subject form is a capital I, a single letter that is a real word meaning "you all." More on both of these below.

Headline trap 1: 'it' has a gender (den vs det)

English has one word for it. Danish has two, and which one you use depends on the gender of the noun you are replacing. Danish nouns are either common gender (en-words) or neuter (et-words), and the pronoun for "it" must match:

• A common-gender noun → den: bilen → den (the car → it)
• A neuter noun → det: huset → det (the house → it)

This is one of the two most common sources of error for English speakers, because English gives you no reason to think about gender at all. The full treatment — including the separate, fixed use of det in weather and impersonal sentences — is on the den vs det page.

Headline trap 2: 'his own' vs 'his' (sin vs hans)

The second famous trap is the reflexive possessive sin/sit/sine. Danish strictly distinguishes between his own (referring back to the subject of the same clause) and his (somebody else's):

English collapses both into his, so learners systematically overuse hans where Danish demands sin. This distinction is detailed on its own page; for now, just register that the difference exists and is not optional.

The reflexive pronoun sig

When the object of a verb is the same person as the subject, Danish uses reflexive forms. For I, you, we, you-all these are identical to the ordinary object forms (mig, dig, os, jer). But the third person has a special dedicated word, sig, covering himself, herself, itself, themselves:

Note that many Danish verbs are reflexive where English is not (at skynde sig = to hurry, literally "to hurry oneself"). The reflexive page covers this.

The generic 'one': man

For statements about people in general, Danish uses man (subject) — much like the somewhat stiff English one, but completely everyday and natural in Danish. Its object/possessive forms borrow from the reflexive set (en, sig, sin):

Where English uses an impersonal you or they ("they say it's going to rain"), Danish very often reaches for man. It is far more common than English one and carries no formal flavour.

The formal De (mostly historical)

Danish once had a polite second-person pronoun De / Dem / Deres (always capitalised), parallel to German Sie or French vous. In modern Danish it has almost vanished — Danes address strangers, bosses, and even the prime minister as du. You will still meet De in older texts, in letters to the royal family, and occasionally from very formal older speakers, so recognise it, but use du.

Relative and interrogative pronouns

Two more families round out the system. Relative pronouns join a clause to a noun — der and som both translate English who/that/which (with der restricted to subject position). Interrogative pronouns ask questions: hvem (who), hvad (what), and hvilken/hvilket/hvilke (which):

These have their own dedicated pages; here just note that they exist and that der and som overlap in ways English who/which/that do not.

Common mistakes

Subject form where the object form is needed (after a preposition). Prepositions always take the object form in Danish, exactly as English says with me, not with I. Learners who translate word for word from a subject pronoun slip here.

Using det for a common-gender 'it'. Because English has only one it, learners default to det for everything. For an en-word you need den.

Lowercasing the plural 'you' (I). The Danish word for you all is a capital I. Writing it lowercase turns it into i, the preposition "in", and produces nonsense.

Overusing hans for 'his own'. When his refers back to the subject of the clause, Danish needs the reflexive sin, not hans.

Key takeaways

• Danish pronouns mark subject vs object case (jeg/mig, han/ham, de/dem), just like English I/me — and only on pronouns, never on nouns.
• "It" is gendered: den for en-words, det for et-words. This is trap number one.
• sin/sit/sine means "one's own" and contrasts with hans/hendes/deres. This is trap number two.
• The third-person reflexive is sig; the generic "one" is man; the polite De is effectively archaic — use du.
• The plural "you" is a capital I — never lowercase it.