Dialogue: Shopping for Clothes | Danish Grammar

A clothes shop is the perfect place to practise adjective agreement, because every garment forces you to choose the right form of the colour word — and Danish colours change shape depending on the gender and number of the noun. This annotated dialogue walks you through buying a jacket, then explains why it's en blå jakke but et blåt tørklæde, what for means in for dyrt, and how to take a compliment.

The dialogue

A customer (K, for kunde) and a shop assistant (E, for ekspedient).

E: Hej, kan jeg hjælpe dig?

Hi, can I help you?

K: Ja tak. Jeg leder efter en blå jakke.

Yes, please. I'm looking for a blue jacket.

E: Vi har den her. Hvilken størrelse bruger du?

We have this one. What size do you take?

K: Jeg bruger størrelse otteogtredive. Må jeg prøve den?

I take size thirty-eight. May I try it on?

E: Selvfølgelig. Prøverummet er derovre.

Of course. The fitting room is over there.

K: Den passer fint, men den er lidt for dyr. Har I en billigere?

It fits fine, but it's a bit too expensive. Do you have a cheaper one?

E: Vi har den samme jakke på tilbud. Den koster fire hundrede kroner.

We have the same jacket on sale. It costs four hundred kroner.

K: Perfekt. Passer det blå tørklæde til jakken?

Perfect. Does the blue scarf go with the jacket?

E: Ja, det klæder dig. Og de blå bukser ville også passe til.

Yes, it suits you. And the blue trousers would go with it too.

K: Så tager jeg jakken og tørklædet. Tak for hjælpen!

Then I'll take the jacket and the scarf. Thanks for the help!

Line-by-line commentary

"Jeg leder efter en blå jakke."

lede efter = "to look for". The preposition efter ("after") is built into the verb; you look after something. Drop it and the sentence falls apart.
en blå jakke introduces the dialogue's main grammar theme. Jakke is common gender (en jakke), so the indefinite article is en and the adjective blå stays in its base form. More on this below.

Adjective agreement: the colour changes shape

Danish adjectives agree with their noun in gender and number. There are three slots to fill, and the dialogue shows all three with the colour blå ("blue"):

Noun	Gender / number	Adjective form	Phrase
en jakke	common, singular	base form: blå	en blå jakke
et tørklæde	neuter, singular	+t: blåt	et blåt tørklæde
bukser	plural	+e: blå	blå bukser

The rule for the indefinite singular:

common gender (en-words) → adjective in its base form: en blå jakke, en stor bil, en billig trøje.
neuter (et-words) → adjective takes a -t: et blåt tørklæde, et stort hus, et billigt ur.
plural (and the definite form) → adjective takes a -e: blå bukser, store biler, billige trøjer.

So blå happens to look unchanged in the common and plural slots, but it grows a -t in the neuter: blåt. That little -t is the whole game, and it's exactly what English speakers forget, because English adjectives never change at all.

Jeg vil gerne have en grøn trøje og et hvidt bælte.

I'd like a green sweater and a white belt.

De røde sko er pænere end de sorte.

The red shoes are nicer than the black ones.

💡

For every adjective, ask two questions of its noun: en-word or et-word? singular or plural? Et-word singular → add -t (blåt, stort, hvidt). Plural or definite → add -e (blå, store, hvide). Common singular → leave it bare.

Why does the brief's example say det blå tørklæde with no -t on blå, even though tørklæde is neuter? Because once the noun is definite (det... tørklæde, "the scarf"), the adjective switches to the -e form — the same -e used in the plural. The neuter -t only appears in the indefinite singular (et blåt tørklæde). Definite or plural, the adjective ends in -e: det blå tørklæde, de blå bukser.

Et blåt tørklæde — men: det blå tørklæde.

A blue scarf — but: the blue scarf.

"Hvilken størrelse bruger du?" / "størrelse otteogtredive"

Hvilken størrelse...? = "What/which size...?" Hvilken is the common-gender form of "which" (it would be hvilket before a neuter noun). Størrelse is common gender.
bruge literally "use", but for clothes and shoes it means "take/wear" a size: Jeg bruger størrelse 38.
otteogtredive = 38. Danish builds the number "units-and-tens": otte og tredive = "eight-and-thirty". This reversed order (unit first, then ten) is a famous Danish hurdle; see the numbers page.

"Må jeg prøve den?"

Må jeg...? = "May I...?", the modal måtte asking permission. Bare infinitive follows: Må jeg prøve...?
prøve = "to try", and for clothes "to try on". You can add på: prøve den på, but plain prøve den is perfectly natural.
den points back to jakke (common gender), so it's den, not det.

Må jeg prøve de sko i størrelse fyrre?

May I try those shoes in size forty?

"den er lidt for dyr"

The key word here is for. Outside this context for means "for", but placed before an adjective it means "too" in the sense of excess:

for dyr = "too expensive"
for stor = "too big"
for lille = "too small"

Don't confuse it with meget ("very"): meget dyr = "very expensive" (a neutral observation), but for dyr = "too expensive" (more than acceptable). Note dyr stays in base form here because it's a predicate after er agreeing with the common-gender den.

Bukserne er for lange — har du en mindre størrelse?

The trousers are too long — do you have a smaller size?

💡

Before an adjective, for means "too (much)": for dyrt, for varmt, for sent. It is not the same as meget ("very"). Meget dyrt = very pricey; for dyrt = more than you'll pay.

"Har I en billigere?" / "Den koster fire hundrede kroner."

billigere = "cheaper", the comparative of billig (regular -ere comparative).
Har I...? uses I ("you", plural/the shop) — capital I is the plural "you" in Danish, distinct from i ("in").
fire hundrede kroner = 400 kr. Hundrede doesn't pluralise here, and the currency kroner follows the number.

"Passer det blå tørklæde til jakken?" / "det klæder dig"

passe til = "to match / go with". Passer ... til jakken = "goes with the jacket". (Earlier, den passer fint used passe alone to mean "fits".)
Det klæder dig = "It suits you", the standard compliment. Klæde here means "to suit/become". The subject det agrees with the neuter tørklæde; if you were complimenting a (common-gender) jakke, you'd say *Den klæder dig*. Pronoun gender must match the garment.

Den farve klæder dig virkelig godt.

That colour really suits you.

"Så tager jeg jakken og tørklædet."

Fronted Så ("then") forces V2: verb tager second, subject jeg third.
The garments now appear definite: jakken (en-word + -en) and tørklædet (et-word + -t → tørklæde + t = tørklædet). The customer means the jacket and the scarf she just chose.

Watch out: the English mis-transfer

Because English adjectives never change, learners leave the colour word in one fixed shape:

❌ et blå tørklæde

Wrong — a neuter indefinite noun needs -t on the adjective.

✅ et blåt tørklæde

a blue scarf

A second slip is mixing up for and meget:

❌ Den er meget dyr, jeg køber den ikke.

Odd — 'very expensive' doesn't explain refusing it.

✅ Den er for dyr, jeg køber den ikke.

It's too expensive, I'm not buying it.

And a third: using det to point back to a common-gender garment:

❌ Jakken? Det klæder dig.

Wrong — jakke is a common-gender en-word, so use 'den'.

✅ Jakken? Den klæder dig.

The jacket? It suits you.

Structures in this dialogue

Indefinite adjective agreement — base form / -t / -e across en blå jakke, et blåt tørklæde, blå bukser. See indefinite adjective agreement and, for det blå tørklæde / de blå bukser, definite adjective agreement.
Noun gender drives every choice above. See the gender overview.
The degree word for ("too") before adjectives — see how it sits in the adjective system via the gender overview.
Numbers and sizes — otteogtredive, fire hundrede kroner. See numbers overview.
Pronoun gender den vs det for garments (Den klæder dig / det klæder dig) — see den, det and 'it'.

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