Short Noun Plurals: Adding "-e"
In the previous lesson, you learned how to form plurals by adding -r or -er. Now we will look at the other main regular plural pattern in Danish: adding just an -e.
This plural ending is incredibly common with short, one-syllable nouns.
Let's look at the word for "door", which goes from the singular dør to the plural døre. Notice how we often pair plurals with the word mange (many):
| Where is the door? | Hvor er døren? |
| The house has many doors. | Huset har mange døre. |
Here is another example showing the transition from a single stol (chair) to stole (chairs):
| The boy finds a chair. | Drengen finder en stol. |
| The family has many chairs. | Familien har mange stole. |
Both En- and Et-Words
This short -e plural ending applies to both common gender (en) and neuter gender (et) nouns.
For example, et land (a country) simply becomes lande, and et skib (a ship) becomes skibe:
| Do you know the country? | Kender du landet? |
| We know many countries. | Vi kender mange lande. |
| The girl sees a ship. | Pigen ser et skib. |
| They see many ships. | De ser mange skibe. |
Recognizing the Pattern
Many of your everyday vocabulary words will follow this exact pattern, such as hunde (dogs), huse (houses), bjerge (mountains), and skove (forests).
Here are a few more examples of these short noun plurals in action:
| The child sees many dogs. | Barnet ser mange hunde. |
| There are many houses in the city. | Der er mange huse i byen. |
| The boy and the girl see many forests and mountains. | Drengen og pigen ser mange skove og bjerge. |
