Breakdown of Kog kartoflen i den store gryde.
i
in
stor
big
den
the (common, before adjective)
kartoflen
the potato
koge
to boil
gryden
the pot
Questions & Answers about Kog kartoflen i den store gryde.
Why is the verb Kog missing its ending?
Kog is the imperative (command) form, used here to give a cooking instruction ("Boil!"). In Danish, you create the imperative by taking the infinitive verb (at koge) and dropping the final -e to get the bare stem: kog.
How is the word kartoflen (the potato) formed?
It comes from the singular noun en kartoffel. When adding the definite ending -en to words ending in -el, Danish drops the extra -e to make it easier to pronounce. Notice that it also drops one of the fs, shrinking from kartoffel to kartoflen.
Why does this sentence use den for "the" instead of adding -en to the end of gryde?
Normally, "the pot" is gryden. But when you add an adjective before a noun (like "big"), Danish uses a separate word for "the" (den for common-gender words, det for neuter). So "the big pot" becomes den store gryde instead of "store gryden".
Why does the adjective store have an -e at the end?
When an adjective is used after a definite article like den or det (the), it must take a definite ending. For almost all adjectives in Danish, this definite ending is simply an -e. So the base word stor becomes store.
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