Komme til at + infinitive is one of those small Danish constructions that does an enormous amount of work and has no clean English counterpart. It runs in two directions at once. In one sense it means something happened by accident or beyond your control — jeg kom til at tabe glasset ("I happened to drop the glass / I dropped the glass by accident"). In the other it is the everyday personal future — du kommer til at elske det ("you're going to love it"). One construction, two readings, and which one you get is decided almost entirely by tense and context. Learn to tell them apart and you unlock a phrase you will hear in nearly every Danish conversation.
Principal parts
The construction is built on the strong verb komme ("come"), which carries all the inflection. The til at never changes, and the second verb stays in the plain infinitive.
| Form | Danish | English |
|---|---|---|
| Infinitive | (at) komme til at | to come to / to be going to |
| Present | kommer til at | am/is/are going to · happen(s) to |
| Past | kom til at | happened to · accidentally did |
| Past participle | er kommet til at | have/has happened to |
| Imperative | — (not used) | — |
Sense 1 — accidental / involuntary
In the past tense, kom til at almost always means the action was not deliberate. You didn't mean to; it just happened. This is the workhorse Danish phrase for "I accidentally..." — there is no separate adverb you need, the construction itself carries the "by accident" meaning.
Undskyld, jeg kom til at tabe dit glas.
Sorry, I accidentally dropped your glass.
Jeg kom til at sende beskeden til den forkerte person.
I accidentally sent the message to the wrong person.
Hun kom til at grine midt i mødet.
She couldn't help laughing in the middle of the meeting.
Compare the deliberate version, where you simply use the plain past and there is no til at:
Jeg tabte glasset med vilje.
I dropped the glass on purpose.
Jeg kom til at tabe glasset.
I dropped the glass by accident.
The contrast is the whole point: tabte alone is neutral or deliberate; kom til at tabe tells the listener it was an accident. Danes use this constantly to soften small mishaps and apologies.
Sense 2 — the personal future
In the present tense, kommer til at is the natural way to say what is going to happen — a prediction or a future that follows from the way things are now. It is close in feeling to English "be going to" rather than the bare "will," and it is more confident and concrete than the plain present-as-future.
Du kommer til at elske den her by.
You're going to love this city.
Det kommer til at regne hele weekenden.
It's going to rain all weekend.
Vi kommer til at savne dig.
We're going to miss you.
Danish can also push a future event with the plain present plus a time adverb — jeg rejser i morgen ("I'm leaving tomorrow"). The difference is subtle but real: the plain present treats the event as a settled plan on your calendar, while kommer til at frames it as something that will come about, often outside anyone's control or as a consequence.
Jeg rejser på mandag.
I'm leaving on Monday. (a fixed plan)
Det kommer til at tage flere timer.
It's going to take several hours. (a prediction about how things will turn out)
You can read more about the various ways Danish expresses what is yet to come on verbs/future-overview, and about the bare-infinitive complement on verbs/at-infinitive-uses.
Common collocations
A handful of pairings come up again and again. Learning them as whole chunks is faster than assembling them word by word.
| Danish | English |
|---|---|
| komme til at tænke på | to happen to think of / be reminded of |
| komme til at savne | to be going to miss |
| komme til at sige noget forkert | to accidentally say the wrong thing |
| det kommer til at gå godt | it's going to be fine |
| komme til skade | to get hurt / be injured (note: no at — fixed idiom) |
Komme til at tænke på deserves special attention: it means a thought occurred to you, as if by itself.
Jeg kom lige til at tænke på, at vi har glemt nøglerne.
It just occurred to me that we've forgotten the keys.
Don't confuse it with the look-alike få nogen til at tænke på ("make someone think of / remind someone of"), which is a different construction — få ... til at, not komme til at — and points outward to what triggers the thought:
Det får mig til at tænke på min barndom.
That reminds me of my childhood. (få ... til at — a different construction)
In conversation
Both senses live happily side by side in real speech. Notice how the past kom til at reads as accidental and the present kommer til at reads as future:
— Hvorfor er du så stille? — Jeg kom til at slette hele dokumentet, og nu er jeg nødt til at starte forfra. Det kommer til at tage hele aftenen.
— Why are you so quiet? — I accidentally deleted the whole document, and now I have to start over. It's going to take all evening.
— Bare rolig, det kommer til at gå godt. — Tak. Jeg kom bare til at tvivle et øjeblik.
— Don't worry, it's going to be fine. — Thanks. I just happened to doubt it for a moment.
Common Mistakes
1. Dropping til at. The construction falls apart without it. Komme alone just means "come."
❌ Jeg kom tabe glasset.
Incorrect — missing til at; this isn't a sentence.
✅ Jeg kom til at tabe glasset.
I accidentally dropped the glass.
2. Reading every past kom til at as deliberate. English has no built-in "accidentally," so learners often miss that the Danish past already encodes it and translate it as a plain, intentional action.
❌ 'Jeg kom til at sige det' = 'I decided to say it.'
Incorrect reading — it means I let it slip / said it by accident.
✅ 'Jeg kom til at sige det' = 'It slipped out / I accidentally said it.'
Correct — the construction marks it as involuntary.
3. Using have in the perfect. Komme takes være.
❌ Jeg har kommet til at glemme hans navn.
Incorrect — komme takes være, not have.
✅ Jeg er kommet til at glemme hans navn.
I've gone and forgotten his name.
4. Inflecting the second verb. The verb after til at stays in the bare infinitive; it never takes a present -r or a past ending.
❌ Du kommer til at elsker det.
Incorrect — the complement must be the infinitive elske, not the present elsker.
✅ Du kommer til at elske det.
You're going to love it.
5. Forcing vil for the future when kommer til at is more natural. Vil leans toward intention or willingness; for a neutral prediction, Danes reach for kommer til at.
❌ Det vil tage flere timer. (sounds like the task is willing to take hours)
Awkward — vil suggests volition.
✅ Det kommer til at tage flere timer.
It's going to take several hours.
Key takeaways
- Past kom til at = something happened by accident.
- Present kommer til at = something is going to happen.
- Only komme inflects; the second verb is always the bare infinitive; the perfect is er kommet til at.
- The neutral future prediction is kommer til at, not vil.
Now practice Danish
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Start learning Danish→Related Topics
- KommeA2 — Full reference for the strong verb komme ('to come'), its være-perfect, and the high-value idiom komme til at.
- Expressing the FutureA2 — Danish has no future tense — it uses the plain present, vil, or skal, each with a different nuance. The key is the skal (plan) vs vil (volition) split that English 'will' obscures.
- Uses of the InfinitiveB1 — Where the bare infinitive and the at-infinitive appear in Danish — after modals, after other verbs and prepositions, as subject or object, in for at / uden at / ved at, and as instructions on signs.
- Choosing Have or Være in the PerfectB1 — Why most Danish verbs build the perfect with have, but verbs of motion and change of state use være — and how the same verb can take either.