Dialogue: Asking for Directions

Asking for directions is one of the first things you will do in a Danish-speaking country, and it packs a surprising amount of grammar into a few short lines: imperatives, question words, place prepositions, and the little directional adverb hen that English has no real word for. This page gives you a natural street-corner exchange, then walks through it line by line so you can hear why each piece sounds the way it does.

The dialogue

A tourist (T) stops a local (L) on the street in Aarhus.

Line-by-line commentary

"Hvordan kommer jeg til banegården?"

The frame Hvordan kommer jeg til...? ("How do I get to...?") is the workhorse question for directions. Three things to notice:

• Word order. Danish is a V2 (verb-second) language: the finite verb sits in second position. Here the question word hvordan takes first position, so the verb kommer comes immediately after, before the subject jeg. English keeps "do I get"; Danish just inverts to kommer jeg.
• til is the preposition of destination, "to". You will reuse it constantly: til banegården, til lufthavnen, til centrum.
• banegården is the definite form ("the station"). The base noun is en banegård (common gender), and the definite suffix -en attaches to the end: banegård
  • en = banegården. Danish puts "the" on the back of the noun, not in front.

"Den ligger lige her i nærheden."

• Den refers back to banegården. Because banegård is common gender, you point back to it with den, not det. Get the gender wrong and you'd say det ligger, which sounds off to a Dane.
• ligger ("lies") is the standard verb for where something is located. Danish prefers ligger (for things lying/situated) and står (for things standing) over a bare "is" far more than English does.
• i nærheden = "in the vicinity / nearby", a fixed phrase with the preposition i.

"Hvor skal jeg hen?"

This little question is the heart of the page. Hvor means "where", but on its own hvor asks about a static location. To ask about direction of movement — "where to?" — Danish adds the directional adverb hen at the end of the clause.

So:

• Hvor er du? = "Where are you?" (location)
• Hvor skal du hen? = "Where are you going?" (direction)

English collapses both into "where", but Danish splits them. With any verb of motion or going, you almost always need hen (or its cousin hen til) to signal "to a destination". The same logic gives you Hvor skal jeg hen? — literally "Where shall I to?"

"Gå lige ud og drej til højre ved lyskrydset."

Now the directions themselves, and they come as imperatives. The Danish imperative is the easiest verb form in the language: it is simply the bare stem of the verb, with no ending at all.

• gå (infinitive at gå) → imperative gå "go"
• dreje (infinitive at dreje) → imperative drej "turn"

You drop the infinitive -e and what's left is the command. Compare: at gå → gå, at dreje → drej, at tage → tag, at fortsætte → fortsæt.

Other pieces in this line:

• lige ud = "straight ahead". Lige here means "straight/directly".
• til højre = "to the right"; til venstre = "to the left". Both are fixed phrases with til. Note højre and venstre never take an article in these phrases.
• ved lyskrydset = "at the traffic light". Ved is the preposition for "at / by / next to" a point. Lyskryds is neuter (et lyskryds), so the definite suffix is -et: lyskrydset.

"Så går du over broen..."

• Så ("then") opens the clause, so by the V2 rule the verb går comes second, ahead of the subject du: så går du, not så du går. This inversion after a fronted adverb trips up English speakers constantly.
• over broen = "over/across the bridge". Bro is common gender (en bro), definite broen.
• på venstre hånd = "on the left-hand side", an idiom (literally "on the left hand").

"Er den langt væk?" / "Det tager kun fem minutter til fods."

• Er den langt væk? — a yes/no question, so the verb er comes first. Langt væk = "far away".
• Det tager... minutter = "It takes... minutes". Here the det is the impersonal "it" of duration. Note it's det tager, neuter, even though we were just talking about den banegård — this det doesn't refer to the station, it's the empty "it" of "it takes time".
• til fods = "on foot", a frozen idiom (an old genitive). You can't say på fod; it's always til fods.

"Tusind tak for hjælpen!" / "Selv tak."

• Tusind tak = "a thousand thanks", the standard warm thank-you. Tak for hjælpen = "thanks for the help", with hjælp (common gender) in its definite form hjælpen.
• Selv tak is the idiomatic "you're welcome" (literally "thanks yourself"). God tur! = "have a good trip!"

Watch out: the English mis-transfer

English speakers reliably get the directional question wrong. In English, "Where am I going?" uses one word, "where". So learners produce:

The fix is to remember that movement to somewhere needs hen parked at the end of the clause. A bare Hvor går jeg? sounds incomplete to a Dane, the way "Where I going?" sounds incomplete to you.

A second common slip is forgetting V2 inversion after a fronted word:

Structures in this dialogue

• Imperatives are bare verb stems — gå, drej, tag, fortsæt. See the imperative.
• Place and destination prepositions — til (to), ved (at), over (across), i (in), på (on). See prepositions overview.
• The question frame Hvordan kommer jeg til...? and the directional Hvor... hen? are covered in wh-questions and the questions overview.
• V2 word order — the verb stays in second position even after a fronted hvordan or så. See the V2 rule.