Tage | Danish Grammar

Tage ('to take') is everywhere in Danish, and it has a special starring role: it is the verb for using transport. Where English says "I'm taking the bus", Danish says exactly the same thing with tage — and crucially, it does not use gå ('walk') for travelling by vehicle. There is also a pronunciation trap: the -g in tage and tager is silent, so the words sound like ta' and ta'r.

Principal parts

Infinitive	Present	Past	Past participle	Imperative
(at) tage	tager	tog	taget	tag!

Tage is a strong verb: the past tog is a vowel change in the stem, and the participle taget takes the strong -et. Note the imperative tag! drops the final -e.

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The -g- *in *tage and tager is silent — they are pronounced "ta'" and "ta'r". In casual writing (and dialogue in novels) you will even see them spelled ta' and ta'r with an apostrophe. The past tog, however, is pronounced with a clear vowel.

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Danish verbs never change for person or number. Jeg tager, du tager, han tager, vi tager, de tager — one present form for everyone.

Present: tager

Jeg tager altid en kop kaffe om morgenen.

I always have (take) a cup of coffee in the morning.

Tager du sukker i teen?

Do you take sugar in your tea?

Det tager kun ti minutter at gå derhen.

It only takes ten minutes to walk there.

Past: tog

Vi tog toget til Aarhus i weekenden.

We took the train to Aarhus at the weekend.

Hun tog sin jakke og gik.

She took her jacket and left.

Present perfect: har taget

Tage takes the auxiliary have — har taget — because it is a transitive 'take', not a verb of motion or change of state.

Har du taget din medicin i dag?

Have you taken your medicine today?

Jeg har taget for mange billeder til at vælge imellem.

I've taken too many photos to choose between.

Tage and transport — the key insight

This is the most important practical point. To say you travel by a vehicle, Danish uses tage (or køre, 'drive/go by vehicle'), never gå. Gå in modern Danish means specifically "to walk, to go on foot". So jeg går til arbejde means you literally walk there; if you take the bus, you must say jeg tager bussen.

Jeg tager bussen til arbejde hver dag.

I take the bus to work every day.

Skal vi tage cyklen eller gå?

Shall we take the bike or walk?

Vi tager toget kl. 8 i morgen.

We're taking the 8 o'clock train tomorrow.

For driving specifically, see køre; for the walk-only sense, see gå.

Key expressions with tage

tage af sted — to depart, set off

Vi tager af sted klokken seks i morgen tidlig.

We're setting off at six tomorrow morning.

tage på — to put on / to gain weight

Jeg har taget på i julen.

I've put on weight over Christmas.

tage med — to come along

Vil du tage med i biografen?

Do you want to come along to the cinema?

This expression is so common it has its own page: tage med.

tage sig sammen — to pull oneself together

A useful reflexive idiom for getting a grip and making an effort.

Du må tage dig sammen og blive færdig med opgaven.

You need to pull yourself together and finish the assignment.

Why tage owns transport — the deeper logic

English keeps "go" as a neutral verb of motion and bolts on a means: "go by bus", "go by train". Danish does not have a single neutral verb of going that works for vehicles. Instead, the means of transport becomes a direct object of tage: you literally "take the bus", tage bussen. This is why gå cannot stand in — gå has narrowed to mean walking on foot, and a bus is not something you walk. The mental model to adopt: in Danish you do not "go somewhere by X"; you "take X". This single shift fixes most transport sentences at once. (For driving yourself, køre — 'drive / go by vehicle' — is the partner verb; jeg kører i bil means "I'm going by car".)

A short dialogue

— Hvordan kommer vi til stationen? — Vi kan tage bussen, eller vi kan gå — det tager kun et kvarter. — Lad os tage af sted nu, så slipper vi for at vente.

— How do we get to the station? — We can take the bus, or we can walk — it only takes fifteen minutes. — Let's set off now, then we avoid waiting.

Common mistakes

The classic English-speaker error is using gå for travelling by vehicle, because English "go" is neutral about how you travel. Danish gå means walk.

❌ Jeg går med bussen til byen.

Wrong — 'gå' means 'walk'; you can't walk with a bus.

✅ Jeg tager bussen til byen.

I take the bus to town.

❌ Vi gik til Aarhus med toget.

Wrong — implies you walked, with a train somehow.

✅ Vi tog til Aarhus med toget.

We went to Aarhus by train.

Use have as the auxiliary; tage is not a motion-to-a-goal verb.

❌ Jeg er taget min medicin.

Wrong auxiliary.

✅ Jeg har taget min medicin.

I've taken my medicine.

Don't add an extra preposition before the means of transport — tage bussen/toget is a direct object, no med needed (though med is fine after a verb of motion).

❌ Jeg tager med bussen hver dag.

Marginal/redundant — 'tage' already takes the vehicle directly.

✅ Jeg tager bussen hver dag.

I take the bus every day.

Finally, mind the silent -g: it is written tager even though you say "ta'r". Don't spell it tar in formal writing.

✅ Hun tager toget kl. 7 hver morgen.

She takes the 7 o'clock train every morning (written 'tager', said 'ta'r').

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