Forklare means to explain, and it is one of the verbs you reach for constantly the moment you start having real conversations in Danish — explaining how something works, why you are late, or what a word means. It is a perfectly regular weak verb, so the conjugation holds no surprises. The one thing that does trip up English speakers is the preposition: you explain something for someone, not til someone.
Principal parts
| Infinitive | Present | Past | Past participle | Imperative |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| (at) forklare | forklarer | forklarede | forklaret | forklar! |
Forklare belongs to the large class of weak verbs that form the past with -ede and the past participle with -et. If you can conjugate this verb, you can conjugate the majority of Danish verbs, because this is the default, productive pattern that new verbs entering the language adopt.
The present: forklarer
The present tense forklarer covers both the English simple present ("I explain") and the present continuous ("I am explaining"). Danish has no separate progressive form, so context tells you which English rendering fits.
Jeg forklarer det gerne en gang til.
I'm happy to explain it one more time.
Læreren forklarer reglerne, før vi går i gang.
The teacher explains the rules before we get started.
Notice that the verb form is identical whether the subject is jeg (I) or læreren (the teacher). The -r ending on the present tense is the only thing you add to the infinitive here, since forklare already ends in -e.
The past: forklarede
The simple past forklarede is the everyday narrative past — what you use to tell someone what happened. The -ede ending is pronounced as a single unstressed syllable, roughly "-eth-the," with the final -de very soft. Unlike English, Danish does not distinguish between "I explained" and "I was explaining" with separate verb forms — forklarede covers both, and only the surrounding words (an adverb like netop, "just," or hele tiden, "the whole time") tell you whether the action was momentary or ongoing.
Hun forklarede, hvordan maskinen virker.
She explained how the machine works.
Jeg forklarede det for ham, men han forstod det ikke.
I explained it to him, but he didn't understand it.
The present perfect: har forklaret
Like nearly all Danish action verbs, forklare forms its perfect with har (have) plus the past participle forklaret. Use it for something completed but still relevant to the present moment.
Jeg har allerede forklaret det to gange.
I've already explained it twice.
Har du forklaret dem, hvad der skete?
Have you explained to them what happened?
The key insight: forklare noget for nogen
Here is the heart of this page. In English you explain something *to someone. In Danish you forklarer noget **for nogen — you explain something *for someone. The preposition for, not til, marks the person who receives the explanation.
This catches almost every learner, because til is the obvious literal translation of English "to," and til genuinely does mean "to" in countless other contexts (give noget til nogen = give something to someone). But with forklare, the recipient takes for. There is no deep logic to memorize here — it is simply the preposition this verb governs, and you have to learn it as part of the verb.
If you want a thread to hang it on: think of for here as marking the person for whose benefit the explaining is done — you lay the explanation out for them. A small group of "communicating-to-someone" verbs behave this way in Danish, and forklare is the most common of them. Contrast this with a verb like sige (to say), where you say something til someone (sige noget til nogen), and you will see that Danish does not assign one preposition to the whole "to a person" idea — each verb has its own. That is the real lesson: in Danish you cannot translate the English preposition; you have to learn which preposition each verb takes, and forklare takes for.
There is one alternative worth knowing: forklare can also be used ditransitively, with the person as a bare indirect object and no preposition at all — forklare nogen noget (Kan du forklare mig det?, "Can you explain it to me?"). Both forklare noget for nogen and forklare nogen noget are standard, but the for-construction is the safer default, especially when the explained thing is a whole clause (forklare det for mig, hvordan…). What you must not do is reach for til.
Kan du forklare det for mig?
Can you explain it to me?
Jeg prøvede at forklare situationen for min chef.
I tried to explain the situation to my boss.
Useful collocations
These combinations come up again and again, so it pays to learn them as ready-made phrases:
| Danish | English |
|---|---|
| forklare noget for nogen | to explain something to someone |
| forklare nærmere | to explain in more detail |
| en forklaring (på noget) | an explanation (for something) |
| det forklarer sagen | that explains it / that clears things up |
| lad mig forklare | let me explain |
The related noun en forklaring (an explanation) is worth noticing: where the verb takes for before a person, the noun takes på before the thing being explained — en forklaring på problemet (an explanation for the problem).
A short dialogue
— Jeg forstår ikke den her regel. Kan du forklare den for mig?
— I don't understand this rule. Can you explain it to me?
— Selvfølgelig. Lad mig forklare det med et eksempel.
— Of course. Let me explain it with an example.
Common mistakes
❌ Jeg vil gerne forklare det til dig.
Incorrect — forklare takes 'for' before the person, not 'til'.
✅ Jeg vil gerne forklare det for dig.
I'd like to explain it to you.
❌ Hun forklarte det i går.
Incorrect — the past tense is forklarede, not forklarte (that would be the -te pattern).
✅ Hun forklarede det i går.
She explained it yesterday.
❌ Jeg har forklare det allerede.
Incorrect — the perfect needs the past participle forklaret, not the infinitive.
✅ Jeg har forklaret det allerede.
I've already explained it.
❌ Jeg har en forklaring for problemet.
Incorrect — the noun forklaring takes 'på' before the thing explained, not 'for'.
✅ Jeg har en forklaring på problemet.
I have an explanation for the problem.
Key takeaways
- Forklare is a fully regular weak verb: forklare / forklarer / forklarede / forklaret.
- One form per tense — no subject agreement.
- You forklare noget for nogen — explain something for (to) someone. Never til.
- The matching noun is en forklaring, which takes på before the thing explained.
When you want a verb for telling rather than explaining, compare fortælle and sige; for the broad family of "talk/say/tell" verbs, see tale, snakke, sige, fortælle.
Now practice Danish
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Start learning Danish→Related Topics
- SigeA1 — Full reference for sige ('to say') — principal parts, all core tenses in natural sentences, its job as a reporting verb (han siger, at...), the idiom det vil sige, and how it differs from fortælle, tale and snakke.
- FortælleB1 — Full reference for fortælle ('to tell, to narrate') — principal parts with the mixed past fortalte, all core tenses in natural sentences, the listener-as-object pattern fortælle nogen noget, fortælle om, the noun en fortælling, and how fortælle differs from sige (say) and tale/snakke (speak/talk).
- TaleA2 — Full reference for tale ('to speak / talk') — the model verb for the weak -te class — with principal parts, all core tenses, the key collocations tale med / tale om / tale dansk, and the everyday contrast with the more casual snakke.
- Tale, Snakke, Sige, Fortælle: Say/Speak/TellB2 — Four Danish verbs cover English say, speak, talk and tell — choose by the complement: a language, a casual chat, an uttered statement, or informing someone.