Synke is a strong verb that carries two distinct meanings — to sink / go down and to swallow — and which of the two you mean controls something English never has to worry about: the choice of perfect auxiliary. When synke means sink (a change of state), it takes være; when it means swallow (an action you perform on something), it takes har. The forms themselves are reassuringly familiar to English speakers: synke, sank, sunket is the direct cognate of sink, sank, sunk.
Principal parts
| Infinitive | Present | Past | Past participle | Imperative |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| at synke | synker | sank | sunket | synk! |
Perfect: er sunket (sink → være) or har sunket (swallow → har). The participle sunket is the standard modern form for both senses; in the swallow sense you will also encounter the regularised synket.
The strong pattern: synke, sank, sunket
This is the classic i — a — u nasal series: synke → sank → sunket, mirroring English sink → sank → sunk and the parallel Danish verbs drikke → drak → drukket (drink) and springe → sprang → sprunget (jump). Hold on to the English cognate and the past tense writes itself.
Skibet sank på under en time.
The ship sank in under an hour.
Solen sank langsomt bag bjergene.
The sun slowly sank behind the mountains.
Hun sank ned i sofaen, helt udmattet.
She sank into the sofa, completely exhausted.
Sense 1 — to sink (change of state, auxiliary være)
When synke describes something descending, settling, or dropping to a lower level — a ship, the sun, your mood, a value — it is a change-of-state verb, and the perfect takes være. The participle then expresses the resulting state: what is sunk now lies lower than before.
Vraget er sunket helt til bunds.
The wreck has sunk all the way to the bottom.
Stemningen er sunket efter den dårlige nyhed.
The mood has dropped after the bad news.
The figurative phrase synke hen means to drift off (into sleep or thought).
Han sank hen i sine egne tanker.
He drifted off into his own thoughts.
This sinking sense reaches far beyond literal water. Spirits synker, courage synker, a person's reputation synker, and you can synke ned into a chair when you collapse into it. In every one of these the subject ends up at a lower point than where it started — which is exactly why the perfect reaches for være. The participle sunket then names the new, lower state: modet er sunket means morale is now low, not merely that it once dropped. English again uses have for all of this (morale has sunk), so the Danish være is a structure you have to add rather than translate.
Hans humør er sunket gevaldigt på det sidste.
His mood has dropped considerably lately.
Sense 2 — to swallow (transitive action, auxiliary har)
When synke means to swallow — moving food, drink, or a pill down your throat — it is a transitive action performed on an object, and the perfect takes har, just like other action verbs. This sense is what you use at the doctor's or the dinner table.
Du skal synke pillen med et glas vand.
You should swallow the pill with a glass of water.
Det gør ondt, når jeg synker.
It hurts when I swallow.
Jeg har lige sunket en forkert mundfuld.
I've just swallowed a wrong mouthful (gone down the wrong way).
A practical reason the swallowing sense is so common: it is the verb Danish doctors, dentists, and pharmacists use. Synk pillen hel (swallow the pill whole), det gør ondt at synke (it hurts to swallow), prøv at synke — these are everyday clinical phrases. Because this sense is transitive, it takes a direct object (synke pillen, synke maden) and a normal har-perfect, behaving like any other action verb. Keeping the two senses mentally tagged — sink = state, være versus swallow = action, har — is the whole skill here.
The partner verb for rising is the opposite of this one; compare stige, which always takes være because rising, like sinking, is a change of level.
Common mistakes
❌ Skibet synkede hurtigt.
Incorrect — synke is strong; there is no weak -ede past.
✅ Skibet sank hurtigt.
The ship sank quickly.
❌ Båden har sunket.
Incorrect — sinking is a change of state, so it needs være.
✅ Båden er sunket.
The boat has sunk.
❌ Jeg er sunket en pille.
Incorrect — swallowing is a transitive action and takes har.
✅ Jeg har sunket en pille.
I have swallowed a pill.
These two errors are mirror images of each other: English speakers either force har onto the sinking sense or, once warned about være, over-apply it to the swallowing sense. The reliable test is transitivity — if there is a direct object being moved down your throat, it is har.
❌ Solen har sunket bag bjergene.
Incorrect — the sun setting is a change of state → være.
✅ Solen er sunket bag bjergene.
The sun has sunk behind the mountains.
❌ Han er sunket maden for hurtigt.
Incorrect — eating/swallowing is transitive → har.
✅ Han har sunket maden for hurtigt.
He swallowed the food too fast.
One more thing to keep straight: do not confuse synke (sink/swallow) with the look-alike verb sænke (to lower, to sink something, transitive and causative — sænke et skib means to sink a ship deliberately). Synke is what the ship does on its own; sænke is what an attacker does to it. The vowels and meanings are different, and mixing them up is a classic intermediate slip.
Ubåden sænkede to skibe, og begge sank inden for få minutter.
The submarine sank two ships, and both went down within minutes.
Key takeaways
- Principal parts: synke — synker — sank — sunket; the direct cognate of sink, sank, sunk.
- Strong i → a → u nasal ablaut.
- Sink (change of state) → perfect with være (er sunket); swallow (transitive action) → perfect with har (har sunket).
- No subject agreement — the only fork is the auxiliary, and meaning decides it.
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Start learning Danish→Related Topics
- Strong Verbs: Ablaut PatternsA2 — Danish strong verbs form their past by changing the stem vowel — learn the major ablaut series as families to turn memorisation into pattern recognition.
- Have vs Være in the PerfectB2 — Danish builds the perfect with two auxiliaries — default har, but er for motion-to-a-goal and change-of-state when you mean the resulting new location or state.
- StigeB2 — How to conjugate and use the strong verb stige (rise, climb, increase, board), including its være perfect and the steg/steget ablaut.