Dialogue: At the Doctor

A visit to the doctor forces together three things Danish does very differently from English: how you say something hurts, how you say you feel unwell, and how the body part takes a definite ending where English would use "my". This annotated dialogue gives you a realistic consultation, then unpacks each line so the patterns stick.

The dialogue

A patient (P) sees the doctor (L, for læge).

Line-by-line commentary

"Jeg har det ikke så godt."

This is the all-purpose "I'm not feeling so well". The frame is have det + adverb:

• Jeg har det godt. = "I'm well / I'm fine."
• Jeg har det skidt. / Jeg har det dårligt. = "I'm feeling rotten / bad."

Literally it's "I have it good/bad", where det is a fixed, empty "it" referring to your general state. You can't drop it: Jeg har godt is wrong. The ikke ("not") slots in after the verb, and så godt = "so/that well".

"Jeg har ondt i hovedet."

Here is the single most important pattern of the dialogue: have ondt i + body part in the definite form. This is how Danish expresses pain.

• ondt is "pain / something hurting" (the neuter of ond, used here as a noun-like complement).
• i = "in".
• The body part appears with its definite suffix, where English uses a possessive:
  • hovedet = "the head" → ondt i hovedet = "a headache"
  • maven = "the stomach" → ondt i maven = "a stomachache"
  • halsen = "the throat" → ondt i halsen = "a sore throat"
  • ryggen = "the back" → ondt i ryggen = "a backache"

Danish reasons that there is only one head that could be hurting — yours — so it uses the head, not my head. Saying ondt i mit hoved sounds heavy and unidiomatic.

Note the genders driving the suffix: hoved is neuter (et hoved), so hoved + et = hovedet; mave, hals, and ryg are common gender (en mave, en hals, en ryg), so they take -en: maven, halsen, ryggen (with the doubled g before the ending).

"Maven gør også ondt."

A second way to say something hurts is [body part] gør ondt — literally "[the body part] does pain", i.e. "hurts". Here the body part is the subject:

• Maven gør ondt. = "My stomach hurts."
• Det gør ondt. = "It hurts / That hurts."

So you have two routes: Jeg har ondt i maven (I have pain in the stomach) and Maven gør ondt (The stomach hurts). Both are completely natural; the second puts the spotlight on the body part.

"Jeg føler mig svimmel."

To say you feel a certain way physically or emotionally, Danish uses the reflexive verb føle sig — "to feel (oneself)". The reflexive pronoun must agree with the subject:

The crucial point for English speakers: the pronoun is obligatory. English says "I feel dizzy"; Danish says "I feel myself dizzy" — Jeg føler *mig svimmel. Drop the *mig and the sentence is broken.

The same reflexive logic appears in jeg rejser mig op ("I stand up", literally "I raise myself up") in the same line, and in du skal hvile dig ("you should rest yourself") later.

"Du skal hvile dig og drikke meget vand."

skal is the modal verb skulle in its present form. With a second person it carries a sense of "should / are to", a soft instruction:

• Du skal hvile dig. = "You should rest."
• Du skal komme igen om en uge. = "You should come back in a week."

Modals are followed by a bare infinitive (no at): skal hvile, skal drikke, skal komme. The doctor's advice strings two of them under one skal: skal hvile dig og drikke...

"Skal jeg tage noget medicin?"

In a question the modal moves to the front: Skal jeg...? = "Should I...?" This is the polite way to ask for instructions. The bare infinitive tage follows.

"Det skal jeg nok."

A lovely idiom to close on. Det skal jeg nok means "I'll do that / I'll be sure to", a reassuring promise. The det is fronted (taking first position), so the verb skal comes second and the subject jeg third — V2 again. The little particle nok here doesn't mean "enough"; it softens the promise into "I'll certainly take care of it".

Watch out: the English mis-transfer

The biggest trap is translating "my head / my stomach" word for word and dropping the reflexive on feel:

A third slip: forgetting that the modal takes a bare infinitive, and inserting at:

Structures in this dialogue

• have ondt i
  • a body part with its definite suffix (hovedet, maven, halsen) — see the definite suffix. The same suffix logic drives why Danish says "the head" where English says "my head".
• Reflexive verbs føle sig, rejse sig, hvile sig with their agreeing pronouns — see reflexive verbs and the reflexive pronoun sig.
• The modal skal / skulle for soft instructions and Det skal jeg nok — see the modal skulle.
• Imperatives for the doctor's commands tag en pille, sæt dig ned — see the imperative.