There are four everyday ways to say that someone owns something in Danish, and at A1 you only need a handful of building blocks: the verb har (have), the -s ending that turns any name into "X's", the verb tilhøre ("belong to"), and the little owner-words min, mit, mine ("my"). This page shows you how to slot those pieces into a real Danish sentence, simplest patterns first. Once you can build "I have a car" and "Anna's car", you can express almost any A1 possession idea.
Pattern 1: "I have…" with har
The most basic ownership sentence uses har, the present tense of have (to have). Danish har never changes for person — jeg har, du har, han har, vi har all use the same form. That alone makes it easier than English, which forces have → has.
The word order is the standard Danish frame: subject, then verb, then the thing.
Jeg har en bil.
I have a car.
Vi har to børn.
We have two children.
Hun har en hund og en kat.
She has a dog and a cat.
To ask a yes/no question, you flip the subject and the verb — har jumps to the front. To make it negative, drop ikke ("not") in right after the verb.
Har du en cykel?
Do you have a bike?
Jeg har ikke en bil.
I don't have a car.
Notice there is no helper verb like English do. Danish never says "do you have" — it simply fronts har. This trips up English speakers constantly, so it is worth saying out loud a few times: Har du…?, not Gør du har…?
Pattern 2: The -s genitive — "Anna's car"
To say "Anna's car", you add -s straight onto the owner, then put the owned thing right after it. This is the same idea as English's apostrophe-s — except Danish uses no apostrophe.
Annas bil er rød.
Anna's car is red.
Det er Peters hus.
That is Peter's house.
Min mors telefon er ny.
My mother's phone is new.
The owner comes first, the possessed thing comes second, exactly mirroring English word order. The one thing to retrain is your hand: write Annas, not Anna's. The apostrophe genitive is one of the most common written mistakes English speakers make in Danish.
If the name already ends in -s, -x, or -z, modern Danish adds an apostrophe only then (to show where the missing -s would go): Lars' bil, Max' hund. That edge case aside, the rule is clean: just add -s.
Pattern 3: tilhøre — "belong to"
When you want to stress that something belongs to someone, use tilhøre. The owned thing becomes the subject, and the owner comes after the verb in the object form.
Bogen tilhører mig.
The book belongs to me.
Den cykel tilhører min bror.
That bike belongs to my brother.
This pattern is a little more formal than just using har, and you will meet it less often in casual speech. But it is the natural way to settle "whose is this?" — Hvem tilhører den her? ("Who does this belong to?").
Pattern 4: Possessive determiners — min, mit, mine
The owner-words my, your, his… are called possessive determiners. The word for "my" has three shapes in Danish, and which one you use depends on the noun that follows — not on you:
| Form | Used before… | Example |
|---|---|---|
| min | a common-gender (en) noun | min bil (my car) |
| mit | a neuter (et) noun | mit hus (my house) |
| mine | any plural noun | mine børn (my children) |
Min bil er gammel, men mit hus er nyt.
My car is old, but my house is new.
Hvor er mine nøgler?
Where are my keys?
This three-way split (common / neuter / plural) runs through the whole possessive system: din/dit/dine (your), vores (our, one form for all), and so on. The key insight for an English speaker is that the form agrees with the owned thing, not the owner. My in English never changes; Danish min/mit/mine always does.
Building it up: simplest to fuller
Watch a possession sentence grow from bare bones to a full statement:
Jeg har en bil.
I have a car.
Jeg har en rød bil.
I have a red car.
Min bror har også en rød bil.
My brother also has a red car.
Min bror har en rød bil, men han kører i min.
My brother has a red car, but he drives mine.
That last sentence shows you a real conversational sequence: state what you have, add a detail, compare, and then refer back to the owner. Each step reuses the same frame.
Substitution table
Mix and match a column from each side to build dozens of correct sentences. The verb har stays put no matter who the subject is — that is the gift of Danish.
| Subject | Verb | Object |
|---|---|---|
| Jeg | har | en bil |
| Du | en cykel | |
| Han | to børn | |
| Vi | en stor hund |
Try it: Du har en stor hund. / Vi har to børn. / Han har en cykel. Every combination is grammatical.
A note on word order
All of these sentences obey Danish's V2 rule: the conjugated verb is always the second element in a main clause. In Jeg har en bil, the verb har is in slot two. If you front something else — say, a time word — the verb still clings to second place and the subject hops behind it: I dag har jeg fri ("Today I have time off"). You do not need to master this at A1, but noticing that har loves second position will save you many word-order mistakes later.
Common Mistakes
❌ Det er Anna's bil.
Incorrect — Danish uses no apostrophe in the genitive.
✅ Det er Annas bil.
That is Anna's car.
The apostrophe-s is pure English transfer. Danish glues the -s straight on.
❌ Han kører i hans bil.
Incorrect if it's his OWN car — hans means someone else's.
✅ Han kører i sin bil.
He drives (in) his (own) car.
When the owner is the same person as the subject, Danish uses the reflexive sin/sit/sine. Hans would mean a different man's car. This sin-vs-hans split has no English equivalent — his covers both.
❌ Gør du har en cykel?
Incorrect — Danish has no 'do' helper in questions.
✅ Har du en cykel?
Do you have a bike?
Just front the verb. There is no Danish word for the question-forming do.
❌ Det er min hus.
Incorrect — hus is a neuter (et) noun, so it needs mit.
✅ Det er mit hus.
That is my house.
The possessive must agree with the owned noun's gender. Et hus → mit hus.
❌ Jeg har ikke bil.
Unnatural — count nouns normally keep their article.
✅ Jeg har ikke en bil.
I don't have a car.
Unlike English, which can drop the article ("I don't have a car" vs. the bare "I have no car"), everyday Danish keeps en/et with countable things.
Key Takeaways
- har never changes form, and questions simply front it — no do.
- The genitive is a bare -s, with no apostrophe: Annas bil.
- tilhøre spells out "belongs to" when you want to be explicit.
- Possessive determiners agree with the owned noun: min bil, mit hus, mine børn.
- Use sin/sit/sine when the owner is the subject of the sentence — never hans for one's own thing.
Now practice Danish
Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.
Start learning Danish→Related Topics
- HaveA1 — Full reference for have ('to have') — principal parts, all core tenses in natural sentences, its role as the default perfect auxiliary, and the har du...? question opener.
- Possessive Determiners: Min, Din, Sin and MoreA1 — How Danish possessives like min, din and sin agree with the thing possessed — and which ones never change at all.
- Sin/Sit/Sine vs Hans/Hendes/DeresB2 — The reflexive possessive sin/sit/sine points back to the clause subject; hans/hendes/deres point to someone else — a meaning switch, not a style choice.
- The V2 Rule: Verb SecondA1 — The core rule of Danish main clauses: the finite verb stands in second position, with exactly one constituent before it — and the subject inverts when anything else is fronted.
- Simple StatementsA1 — How to build basic Danish declaratives — subject-first SVO, the obligatory subject, and the core verbs er and har — with model sentences and a substitution table to generate your own.