Danish has two participles, and they pull in opposite directions. The present participle in -ende describes something active and ongoing — a crying child, a running tap. The past participle describes something passive and completed — a painted wall, a sold car. Getting the forms right is the easy half; the harder and more useful half is understanding what each participle means, because that meaning explains the single most common mistake English speakers make in Danish.
The present participle: -ende
To form the present participle, add -ende to the verb stem. It is completely regular — there are no exceptions to learn.
| Infinitive | Present participle | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| tale | talende | speaking |
| løbe | løbende | running |
| synge | syngende | singing |
| græde | grædende | crying |
| komme | kommende | coming |
As an adjective — and it never inflects
The present participle's main job is to work as an adjective, and crucially it is invariable: it does not change for gender, number, or definiteness the way ordinary adjectives do. Grædende stays grædende in every position.
Et grædende barn løb hen til sin mor.
A crying child ran over to its mother.
De grædende børn blev trøstet af læreren.
The crying children were comforted by the teacher.
Both et grædende barn (neuter singular) and de grædende børn (plural) keep the identical form — no -t, no -e. This invariability is one of the clearest signals that you are dealing with a present participle and not a normal adjective.
As a noun
Present participles frequently become nouns, usually referring to a person who does the action. They take the definite plural -de: de rejsende (the travellers), de studerende (the students), de handlende (the shoppers / the people acting).
De rejsende ventede på perronen.
The travellers waited on the platform.
Antallet af studerende er steget i år.
The number of students has risen this year.
What it does NOT do: it is not a tense
Here is the single most important thing to internalise. In English, the -ing form is a verb tense — the heart of the progressive: "I am running," "she is talking." In Danish, the -ende participle is not a tense at all. You cannot use it to say what someone is doing right now. To express an ongoing action, Danish uses the plain present tense, which already covers both "I run" and "I am running."
Jeg løber lige nu.
I am running right now. (plain present — NOT *jeg er løbende)
The past participle: -et / -t / strong
The past participle is the form you already know from the perfect (jeg har talt) and the passive. Its ending depends on the verb's class:
| Class | Infinitive | Past participle | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| weak (-ede) | male | malet | painted |
| weak (-te) | købe | købt | bought |
| strong | synge | sunget | sung |
| strong | skrive | skrevet | written |
The past participle carries a passive, completed meaning: the thing it describes has had the action done to it. A malet væg is a wall that has been painted; a skrevet brev is a letter that has been written.
Three verbal roles
In the perfect:
Hun har skrevet tre bøger.
She has written three books.
In the passive (with blive):
Huset blev malet sidste sommer.
The house was painted last summer.
The blive-passive is covered in full at the blive passive.
As an adjective — and it DOES inflect
Unlike the present participle, the past participle behaves like a normal adjective when it modifies a noun: it inflects for gender, number, and definiteness. This is the mirror image of the -ende rule, and keeping the two apart is half the battle.
| Form | Example | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| common-gender singular | en malet væg | a painted wall |
| neuter singular | et malet hus | a painted house |
| plural / definite | malede vægge | painted walls |
De nymalede vægge dufter stadig af maling.
The freshly painted walls still smell of paint.
Vi købte et brugt køleskab til lejligheden.
We bought a used fridge for the apartment.
Notice malede vægge: the -e plural ending lands on the participle exactly as it would on any adjective. Treating the past participle as frozen — leaving it as malet in front of a plural noun — is a hallmark learner error.
The active/passive contrast in one pair
Put the two participles of the same verb side by side and the meaning split is unmistakable:
Kogende vand bobler i gryden.
Boiling water bubbles in the pot. (kogende — the water is actively boiling)
Et kogt æg er nemt at skrælle.
A boiled egg is easy to peel. (kogt — the egg has been boiled)
The kogende water is doing the boiling; the kogt egg has had boiling done to it. Active versus passive, ongoing versus completed — captured entirely by the choice of participle.
Common mistakes
The flagship error is importing the English progressive — using the present participle as if it were a tense:
❌ Jeg er løbende i parken nu.
Incorrect — Danish has no progressive participle; use the plain present.
✅ Jeg løber i parken nu.
I am running in the park now.
❌ Hun er talende i telefonen.
Incorrect — again, the plain present expresses an ongoing action.
✅ Hun taler i telefonen.
She is talking on the phone.
Failing to inflect the past participle when it is used as an adjective before a plural or definite noun:
❌ De malet vægge ser flotte ud.
Incorrect — as an adjective the past participle inflects: malede.
✅ De malede vægge ser flotte ud.
The painted walls look great.
And the reverse — wrongly inflecting the invariable present participle:
❌ De grædendte børn.
Incorrect — the present participle never inflects; it stays grædende.
✅ De grædende børn.
The crying children.
Key takeaways
- Present participle = stem + -ende: active and ongoing; works as an invariable adjective (et grædende barn) or a noun (de rejsende). It is not a tense — Danish uses the plain present for ongoing actions.
- Past participle = -et / -t / strong form: passive and completed; used in the perfect and passive, and as an inflecting adjective (en malet væg, malede vægge).
- The clean test: present participle = the thing is doing it; past participle = the thing has had it done to it.
For how participle-adjectives fit the wider adjective system, see adjectives overview; for the English -ing trap in detail, see present progressive.
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Start learning Danish→Related Topics
- Danish Adjectives: An OverviewA1 — A map of Danish adjective agreement: the indefinite paradigm (base / +t / +e) and the definite -e form, all driven by gender, number, and definiteness — presented as two forms to choose between.
- The Blive PassiveB1 — The blive-passive (blive + past participle) is Danish's everyday passive for a single, concrete, dynamic event — and the key contrast it forces is blive (the action happening) vs være (the state that results).
- Inventing a Progressive TenseA2 — Why 'jeg er spisende' for 'I am eating' is wrong — the plain present already means '-ing', plus the real Danish ways to stress an action in progress.
- 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.