Indirect Questions

An indirect question is a question tucked inside a bigger sentence: not "Where does he live?" but "I don't know where he lives." The moment a question becomes the object of a verb like vide ("know"), spørge ("ask"), or undre sig over ("wonder"), Danish reshapes it. Two things happen, and English speakers reliably miss the second one: yes/no questions get the link word om ("whether/if"), and all indirect questions switch to subordinate word order — which means the verb inversion of a direct question disappears.

Direct vs. indirect: the core shift

A direct question in Danish, like in English, inverts subject and verb: the verb comes first (yes/no) or right after the hv-word (wh-question). An indirect question is a subordinate clause, and Danish subordinate clauses do not invert — the subject comes before the verb.

Look at the verb. In the direct question it's bor han (verb–subject). In the indirect version it flips to han bor (subject–verb). That flip is the single most important thing on this page.

Yes/no questions → om ("whether/if")

A direct yes/no question starts with the finite verb. When you embed it, you can't start a subordinate clause with a bare verb, so Danish inserts om, which corresponds to English "whether" (or, more casually, "if").

The verb that opened the direct question (kommer, har) drops back to its subordinate position after the subject (om han kommer, om jeg havde betalt). The om is non-negotiable — you cannot embed a yes/no question without it.

Note that Danish om covers both English "whether" and conditional-feeling "if" in this context. (Be careful: the if of real conditions — "if it rains" — is hvis, not om. They are different words doing different jobs.)

Wh-questions → keep the hv-word, drop the inversion

For wh-questions (hvad, hvem, hvor, hvornår, hvorfor, hvordan), you keep the question word at the front of the embedded clause — it does the linking, so no om is added. But the rest of the clause goes into subordinate order: subject before verb, no inversion.

In every case the hv-word stays, but watch the verb retreat behind the subject: filmen begynder (not begynder filmen), han sagde (not sagde han). This is exactly parallel to English, which also drops the auxiliary inversion ("when does the film start" → "when the film starts"). The difference is that Danish marks it through word order rather than through do-support, so the cue is purely positional.

When the hv-word is the subject, there's nothing to invert in the first place, and the two orders look identical — but the clause is still subordinate:

Here a small but important detail appears: when the hv-word is the subject of the embedded clause, Danish inserts the dummy der. So hvem der ringede, hvad der skete, not hvem ringede / hvad skete inside the subordinate clause.

With sentence adverbials like ikke

Because indirect questions are subordinate clauses, a negating adverb like ikke moves to its subordinate position — before the finite verb — not after it.

The placement of ikke (before kommer, before havde) is another fingerprint of subordinate order.

Common Mistakes

This is the classic English-transfer error. English drops do-support but the surface still looks "uninverted", and learners forget Danish needs the same flip: hvor han bor, not hvor bor han.

Embed a yes/no question with om, then use subordinate order.

Use om for embedded yes/no questions; hvis is for real conditions ("if it rains").

When the question word is the subject of the embedded clause, insert der.

Key Takeaways

• Embedding a question removes inversion: bor han → han bor.
• Yes/no questions take om ("whether/if"); never confuse it with conditional hvis.
• Wh-questions keep the hv-word and switch to subordinate order.
• A subject hv-word triggers the dummy der: hvem der ringede, hvad der skete.
• Ikke sits before the verb inside the embedded clause.