Accidental Actions with "kom til at"
In English, when you do something by mistake, you usually add the word "accidentally." In Danish, you express this using a special grammatical phrase: the past tense of the verb komme (kom) followed by til at and the infinitive of the action verb.
To say "I accidentally [did something]," you use:
- kom til at
- infinitive
| Oops, I accidentally deleted the attachment. | Ups, jeg kom til at slette vedhæftningen. |
| The boy fumbled and accidentally made a typo. | Drengen fumlede og kom til at lave en skrivefejl. |
Everyday Slips and Mistakes
This structure is very common in spoken Danish for all sorts of everyday clumsy moments, like washing clothes incorrectly, bending a zipper, or burning dinner.
| She accidentally washed the sweater wrong, so it shrank. | Hun kom til at vaske trøjen forkert, så den krympede. |
| The girl accidentally bent the zipper on her bag. | Pigen kom til at bøje lynlåsen på sin taske. |
| The women accidentally scorched the food in the pan. | Kvinderne kom til at svide maden på panden. |
"Kom til at" in Questions
Because kom is the conjugated main verb in the sentence, it follows standard Danish word order rules. To ask if someone did something accidentally, simply invert the subject and kom, or place kom immediately after a question word.
| Did you accidentally mix up the jackets? | Kom du til at forveksle jakkerne? |
| How did you accidentally crumple the receipt? | Hvordan kom du til at krølle kvitteringen? |
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