Present Perfect of Modal Verbs
To express that you "have been able to" or "have had to" do something, Danish uses a compound perfect tense. You form this by combining the auxiliary verb har, the past participle of a modal verb, and the bare infinitive of your main verb.
Common modal past participles include:
- kunnet (been able to)
- villet (wanted to)
- måttet (had to)
| Have you been able to read the whole article? | Har du kunnet læse hele artiklen? |
| We have had to ignore the mistake in order to finish. | Vi har måttet ignorere fejlen for at blive færdige. |
Past Perfect of Modals & Missed Opportunities
To talk about what you "had wanted to" or "had been supposed to" do before something else happened, replace har with the past auxiliary havde. Other modal participles you will frequently see are skullet (been supposed to) and turdet (dared to).
When explaining why you didn't do something you had planned to, you will often use verbs like orke (to have the energy to) and undlade (to refrain from).
| I had wanted to participate, but I simply didn't have the energy to. | Jeg havde villet deltage, men jeg orkede simpelthen ikke. |
| You had been supposed to refrain from revealing his secret. | Du havde skullet undlade at afsløre hans hemmelighed. |
Discussing Difficulties and Excuses
When tasks are overwhelming, or people fail to do what they should have done, you can use these perfect modal structures alongside words describing capabilities and excuses.
| I haven't been able to help them because I didn't manage to. | Jeg har ikke kunnet hjælpe dem fordi jeg ikke magtede det. |
To criticize a poor excuse, you can combine these structures with descriptive vocabulary like utilgivelig (unforgivable) and en bortforklaring (a poor excuse).
| It is an unforgivable poor excuse that she hasn't been able to find her way. | Det er en utilgivelig bortforklaring at hun ikke har kunnet finde vej. |