Text: An Opinion Column Excerpt

The Danish opinion column — the debatindlæg or kronik of a daily newspaper — has a distinctive grammar of persuasion. It marshals argumentative connectives to signpost the logic, leans on the generic man to make claims feel universal, hedges bold assertions with modal verbs (Danish has no subjunctive, so the hedging is done lexically), and packs information into nominal style for an air of authority. This page reads a short authentic-style column and pulls out the structures that make it sound like real Danish opinion writing.

The text

The short passage below is composed in the style of a Danish newspaper opinion column.

Vi taler meget om bæredygtighed, men gør vi egentlig nok? For det første er forbruget af tøj steget voldsomt de seneste år. Dernæst smider danskerne langt mere mad ud, end de selv tror. Man kunne hævde, at problemet er for stort til den enkelte — at det er politikernes ansvar. Det er det også. Men ikke desto mindre begynder forandringen hos os selv. Den, der venter på, at andre handler først, kommer aldrig i gang. Tværtimod viser erfaringen, at de små vaner smitter. Derfor er løsningen ikke kun bedre lovgivning, men også en ændring af vores daglige adfærd. Spørgsmålet er ikke, om vi har råd til at handle. Spørgsmålet er, om vi har råd til at lade være.

English translation

We talk a lot about sustainability, but are we really doing enough? In the first place, clothing consumption has risen dramatically in recent years. Next, Danes throw away far more food than they themselves think. One could argue that the problem is too big for the individual — that it is the politicians' responsibility. It is that, too. But nonetheless, change begins with ourselves. Whoever waits for others to act first never gets started. On the contrary, experience shows that small habits are contagious. Therefore the solution is not only better legislation, but also a change in our daily behaviour. The question is not whether we can afford to act. The question is whether we can afford not to.

Grammar in action

For det første... Dernæst... — the connective scaffolding

Formal Danish argument is openly signposted. For det første ("in the first place / firstly") and Dernæst ("next / secondly") order the points like beams in a frame. Each is a fronted adverbial, so each triggers V2 inversion: For det første *er forbruget steget, Dernæst **smider danskerne*. The reader is never left guessing where they are in the argument. Note that fronting these connectives is not optional decoration — it is how Danish prose structures a paragraph.

Man kunne hævde, at... — modal hedging where English would use a subjunctive

Danish has no living subjunctive, so the tentative, "one might say" register that English builds with modals ("one could argue") is built the same way in Danish — with a modal verb in its past form used for present hypothetical meaning. Man kunne hævde ("one could argue") uses kunne (past of kan) not to mean past time but to mark the claim as hypothetical and distanced. This is the closest Danish gets to a counterfactual: shift the modal to its past form (kunne, ville, skulle, måtte) and the present-time meaning becomes hedged and polite.

The generic man — making a claim universal

Man kunne hævde, Man smider mad ud — the pronoun man ("one / people / you-in-general") is the backbone of Danish opinion writing. It lets the writer make a claim about everyone without naming anyone, lending the argument an air of common sense. English increasingly avoids "one" as stiff and substitutes "you" or the passive; Danish uses man constantly and at every register. It takes the possessive ens and the object form en: man gør sit bedste ("one does one's best").

ikke desto mindre and Tværtimod — the adversative pivots

Two heavyweight adversative connectives turn the argument. Ikke desto mindre ("nonetheless / nevertheless") concedes the previous point and pushes past it: Det er politikernes ansvar... Men ikke desto mindre begynder forandringen hos os selv. And Tværtimod ("on the contrary") doesn't just qualify — it reverses: it says the opposite of what you might expect is true. Both are fronted, both invert the verb. They are the marks of a writer steering the reader through a turn in the reasoning.

Den, der venter... — the headless relative as a maxim

Den, der venter på, at andre handler først, kommer aldrig i gang ("Whoever waits for others to act first never gets started") is a headless relative construction: den, der... ("the one who... / whoever..."). It compresses a whole class of people into a single subject and gives the sentence the ring of a proverb — a favourite move in persuasive prose. Note the relative pronoun here is der (subject of its clause), and the comma before it is obligatory in Danish, which punctuates subordinate clauses more heavily than English.

en ændring af vores daglige adfærd — the nominal style

Formal Danish compresses verbs into nouns: instead of vi ændrer, hvordan vi opfører os ("we change how we behave"), the column writes en ændring af vores daglige adfærd ("a change in our daily behaviour"). This nominal style — abstract nouns linked by af and the genitive — is the texture of authoritative Danish prose. It is dense and impersonal, and learners should both recognise it and use it sparingly; overdone, it becomes the bureaucratic kancellistil that Danes themselves criticise.

Spørgsmålet er ikke, om... Spørgsmålet er, om... — rhetorical questions and parallelism

The column opens with a rhetorical question (gør vi egentlig nok?, "are we really doing enough?") and closes with a parallel pair built on om ("whether"): Spørgsmålet er ikke, om vi har råd til at handle. Spørgsmålet er, om vi har råd til at lade være. The repetition with a flipped ending is a classic rhetorical figure, and om is the Danish subordinator for embedded yes/no questions ("whether"). The particle egentlig ("really / actually") in the opening question adds a note of genuine challenge rather than mere information-seeking.

Common Mistakes

The biggest transfer error here is reaching for an English-style subjunctive or "would."

For the hedged "one could/might argue," Danish uses kunne (past of kan), not ville.

For embedded yes/no questions ("whether"), use om; hvis is only the conditional "if."

Key takeaways

For how Danish restates and qualifies a point, see reformulation and the adversative connectives. The dense noun phrases of formal prose are explained at nominal style, the conventions of the register at formal writing, and the all-important generic pronoun at the man-generic.