Lege ("to play") is the verb of childhood: running around the garden, building dens, playing make-believe, playing hide-and-seek. It conjugates as a clean regular -ede verb, so the forms give no trouble. The genuine challenge is that English has a single verb "play" where Danish splits the meaning in two — lege for free, imaginative, unstructured play, and spille for anything with rules, a board, a ball, or an instrument. Choosing the wrong one is one of the most common and most noticeable errors an English speaker makes, so this page treats the lege/spille divide as its centrepiece.
Principal parts
| Form | Danish | English |
|---|---|---|
| Infinitive | (at) lege | to play |
| Present | leger | play(s) |
| Past | legede | played |
| Past participle | leget | played |
| Imperative | leg! | play! |
Lege vs. spille: the two "plays"
This is the heart of the verb. Use the table as your decision guide:
| Use lege when… | Use spille when… |
|---|---|
| children play freely (i haven, i sandkassen) | you play a game with rules (et spil, et brætspil) |
| it's make-believe / role-play (lege far, mor og børn) | you play a sport (spille fodbold, tennis) |
| it's a children's game like hide-and-seek (lege gemmeleg) | you play an instrument (spille klaver, guitar) |
| you "play with" toys (lege med klodser) | you play cards or a match (spille kort, spille en kamp) |
A useful rule of thumb: if there is a et spil ("a game") or an instrument involved, the verb is spille. If it is open-ended, imaginative, child-driven play, it is lege. Note the etymological hint — spille and et spil share a root, so "playing a game" naturally pairs with spille.
Børnene leger i haven hele eftermiddagen.
The children play in the garden all afternoon.
Drengene spiller fodbold på den anden side af vejen.
The boys are playing football on the other side of the road.
Min datter elsker at lege far, mor og børn med dukkerne.
My daughter loves playing house with the dolls.
Present: leger
The present leger is the same for every subject.
| Subject | Form | Example |
|---|---|---|
| jeg | leger | jeg leger med min lillebror |
| du | leger | du leger så fint med de andre |
| han / hun | leger | hun leger ude på legepladsen |
| vi | leger | vi leger gemmeleg |
| de | leger | de leger pirater |
Vil du lege med mig? — det spørger børn hinanden om hele tiden.
"Do you want to play with me?" — that's what children ask each other all the time.
De leger gemmeleg ude i haven.
They're playing hide-and-seek out in the garden.
Past: legede
Da jeg var lille, legede vi udenfor fra morgen til aften.
When I was little, we played outside from morning till night.
Børnene legede pirater og byggede en hule af tæpper.
The children played pirates and built a den out of blankets.
Present perfect: har leget
The perfect takes har plus the participle leget — playing is an activity, so the auxiliary is always har.
Har I leget pænt sammen i dag?
Have you played nicely together today?
Hunden og barnet har leget i timevis.
The dog and the child have played for hours.
Past perfect: havde leget
De var helt udmattede, fordi de havde leget hele dagen.
They were completely worn out because they had played all day.
Legeplads, legetøj and the noun en leg
The verb lege spawns a whole family of everyday nouns: en legeplads ("a playground"), legetøj ("toys"), and en leg ("a game/play activity," plural lege). A gemmeleg is the game of hide-and-seek itself.
Vi mødtes på legepladsen ved søen.
We met up at the playground by the lake.
Rydder du lige dit legetøj op før aftensmad?
Will you tidy up your toys before dinner?
Common collocations and fixed expressions
- lege med (+ noun) — to play with (toys, a friend)
- lege gemmeleg — to play hide-and-seek
- lege far, mor og børn — to play house ("play dad, mum and kids")
- lege med ilden — to play with fire (also figurative)
- en legeplads — a playground; legetøj — toys
Pas på — du leger med ilden, hvis du svarer chefen sådan.
Careful — you're playing with fire if you answer the boss like that.
A natural exchange
— Hvad lavede børnene? — De legede i haven hele formiddagen og spillede så et brætspil, da det begyndte at regne. — Godt, de leger så godt sammen. — Ja, men nu vil min søn kun spille fodbold.
— What did the kids do? — They played in the garden all morning and then played a board game when it started raining. — Good, they play so well together. — Yes, but now my son only wants to play football.
Common mistakes
❌ Børnene spiller i haven.
Wrong verb for free play — unless there's a structured game, children's play in the garden is lege.
✅ Børnene leger i haven.
The children are playing in the garden.
❌ Jeg leger klaver.
Wrong verb — instruments take spille, never lege.
✅ Jeg spiller klaver.
I play the piano.
❌ Vi legte gemmeleg.
Wrong past — lege is an -ede verb, so the past is legede, not legte.
✅ Vi legede gemmeleg.
We played hide-and-seek.
❌ Drengene leger fodbold.
Wrong verb for a sport — football has rules, so it takes spille.
✅ Drengene spiller fodbold.
The boys are playing football.
❌ Børnene har legt sammen hele dagen.
Wrong participle — the perfect of lege is leget.
✅ Børnene har leget sammen hele dagen.
The children have played together all day.
The companion verb for games, sport, and instruments is spille; studying the two side by side is the fastest way to internalise the split. Both follow the regular -ede past tense.
Now practice Danish
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Start learning Danish→Related Topics
- SpilleA1 — Full reference for spille ('to play' — a game, an instrument, a role). Principal parts, the regular -ede pattern across all core tenses, the crucial split between spille (structured play) and lege (children's free play), and the everyday collocations spille fodbold, spille klaver and spille en rolle.
- Weak Past: The -ede ClassA1 — The largest, productive class of Danish regular verbs — past in -ede, participle in -et — and the safe default for any verb you don't recognise.
- The Present PerfectA2 — How Danish builds the present perfect with have (or være) plus the past participle — and the one rule English speakers need: definite past time takes the simple past, not the perfect.
- Danish Verbs: An OverviewA1 — A big-picture map of the Danish verb system — no person agreement, one present and one past form per verb, compound perfects, the passive, and modals.
- Danish Prepositions: An OverviewA1 — Why Danish prepositions are easy grammatically but hard to choose — and how to learn them by Danish logic instead of English glosses.