If you have ever struggled with Spanish, French, or German verb tables — six different endings per tense, all of which you had to memorize — Danish is about to feel like a holiday. The single most important fact about the Danish verb is this: it does not change for person or number. There is one present form and one past form per verb, and they serve every subject. This page is the map; the detailed pages it links to are the territory.
The headline: no agreement
In English you still say I am, you are, he is — three different forms of one verb. In Danish, "to be" in the present is er, full stop, for every subject.
| English | Danish |
|---|---|
| I am | jeg er |
| you are | du er |
| he/she is | han/hun er |
| we are | vi er |
| they are | de er |
The same is true of every other verb. Take tale ("to speak"): the present is taler for everybody.
Jeg taler dansk, og han taler også dansk.
I speak Danish, and he speaks Danish too.
Vi taler tit om dig.
We often talk about you.
Notice that han taler has no extra ending — no English-style -s, no Romance person-marking. The verb is identical whether the subject is jeg, du, han, vi, or de.
One verb across the tenses
Because there is no agreement, learning a verb means learning its principal parts — four forms that generate everything else. Here is tale all the way through:
| Form | Danish | English |
|---|---|---|
| Infinitive | (at) tale | to speak |
| Present | taler | speak(s) |
| Past | talte | spoke |
| Past participle | talt | spoken |
Jeg taler med naboen hver dag.
I talk to the neighbour every day. (present)
I går talte jeg med naboen.
Yesterday I talked to the neighbour. (past)
Jeg har talt med naboen om det.
I have talked to the neighbour about it. (present perfect)
Master those four forms and the whole verb falls open. The real work in Danish is not conjugating — it is knowing which past-tense class a verb belongs to, and which auxiliary its perfect takes.
The present: add -r
The present tense is the easiest tense in the language. For the vast majority of verbs, you simply add -r to the infinitive: tale → taler, bo → bor ("live"), gå → går ("go/walk"). A small set of high-frequency verbs has irregular presents — er (be), har (have), gør (do), ved (know), plus the modals kan, vil, skal — and these you learn one by one. See The Present Tense for the full story, including why Danish has no separate continuous form.
The past: two weak classes plus strong verbs
The past tense is where verbs sort into groups. There are two weak (regular) classes and one strong (ablaut) group.
- -ede class — the largest and most productive. lave → lavede ("make → made"), snakke → snakkede ("chat → chatted"). New verbs entering Danish join this class.
- -te class — also weak, but the ending is -te. tale → talte, rejse → rejste ("travel → travelled"), købe → købte ("buy → bought").
- Strong verbs — these change their stem vowel instead of adding an ending, exactly like English sing–sang–sung. finde → fandt ("find → found"), drikke → drak ("drink → drank"), skrive → skrev ("write → wrote").
Vi lavede mad sammen i går.
We made food together yesterday. (-ede weak)
Hun købte en ny cykel.
She bought a new bike. (-te weak)
Han skrev et langt brev til sin mor.
He wrote a long letter to his mother. (strong)
The weak classes are covered in Weak Past: The -ede Class and the strong patterns in the strong-verb pages. There is no fully reliable rule for predicting which class a verb takes, so the past form is part of what you learn with each new verb — just as you learned English go–went by heart.
The perfect: have or være
To say "I have spoken," Danish puts an auxiliary in front of the past participle. The default auxiliary is have:
Jeg har spist.
I have eaten.
But a group of verbs describing motion or change of state uses være ("to be") instead — much as older or more formal English once said "he is gone" rather than "he has gone":
Han er gået allerede.
He has (literally: is) left already.
Toget er kommet.
The train has arrived.
Choosing between them is a real decision point, handled in Choosing Have or Være in the Perfect. For now, just note that have is the workhorse and være is the special case.
The passive: two ways
Danish has two passive constructions, and you will meet both early. The -s passive simply adds -s to the verb, and the blive-passive uses the auxiliary blive ("become") plus the participle.
Dørene lukkes klokken seks.
The doors are closed at six. (-s passive, general/habitual)
Cyklen blev stjålet i nat.
The bike was stolen last night. (blive-passive, a single event)
As a rough guide, the -s passive suits general rules and recurring situations, while the blive-passive suits concrete one-off events. The full breakdown is in The Passive Voice: An Overview.
Modals and the infinitive
The modal verbs — kan (can), vil (will/want), skal (shall/must), må (may/must), bør (ought), tør (dare) — behave like their English cousins: they are followed by a bare infinitive with no at.
Jeg kan svømme, men jeg vil hellere cykle.
I can swim, but I'd rather cycle.
Everywhere else, the infinitive is marked by at ("to"), pronounced like the unrelated conjunction at ("that") but functioning like English "to":
Det er svært at lære at danse.
It's hard to learn to dance.
See Modal Verbs: An Overview and The Infinitive and the Marker At.
Common mistakes
❌ Han taler-s dansk.
Incorrect — no English 3rd-person -s exists in Danish; the verb never agrees.
✅ Han taler dansk.
He speaks Danish.
❌ Vi er taler om det nu.
Incorrect — there is no progressive 'be + -ing' construction; the present alone covers it.
✅ Vi taler om det nu.
We are talking about it now.
❌ Jeg har gået hjem.
Incorrect for 'I have gone home' — a change-of-location verb takes være, not have.
✅ Jeg er gået hjem.
I have gone home.
❌ Jeg kan at svømme.
Incorrect — a modal is followed by a bare infinitive, never by at.
✅ Jeg kan svømme.
I can swim.
Key takeaways
- Danish verbs do not agree with their subject: one present form, one past form, for everyone.
- Learning a verb means learning four principal parts: infinitive, present, past, participle.
- The present adds -r; the past falls into the -ede, -te, or strong classes.
- The perfect uses have by default, være for motion/change verbs.
- The passive comes in an -s form and a blive form.
- Your effort shifts away from memorizing endings and toward choosing the right tense, auxiliary, and past-tense class. That is a far lighter load than Romance or German conjugation.
Now practice Danish
Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.
Start learning Danish→Related Topics
- The Present TenseA1 — How to form the Danish present (add -r) and why one present form covers English's simple present, present continuous, and 'going to' future.
- The Past Tense: An OverviewA1 — How the Danish simple past (datid) splits into weak -ede, weak -te, and strong (vowel-change) verbs — and why you must learn each verb's class.
- 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.
- The Infinitive and the Marker AtA1 — The Danish infinitive, the infinitive marker at ('to'), when to use it and when to drop it — and the notorious at/og spelling trap.
- Modal Verbs: An OverviewA2 — The six core Danish modals — kunne, ville, skulle, måtte, burde, turde — their present and past forms, and the iron rule that they take a bare infinitive with no at.
- The Passive Voice: An OverviewB1 — Danish has not one passive but three — the -s passive, the blive-passive, and the være-passive — each carrying a different nuance of process, event, or resultant state. Here is how they fit together.