Breakdown of Drengen vasker sig i badeværelset.
drengen
the boy
i
in
vaske
to wash
badeværelset
the bathroom
Questions & Answers about Drengen vasker sig i badeværelset.
Why do we use sig here instead of ham?
sig is the reflexive pronoun for the third person (he, she, it, they). Because the boy is the subject and he is washing himself (the same person), we must use sig. If we wrote Drengen vasker ham, it would mean the boy is washing a completely different male person!
In English we can sometimes just say 'The boy washes in the bathroom.' Can we drop sig in Danish?
No, you cannot drop it here. In Danish, the verb at vaske (to wash) requires an object. If you are washing your own body, you must use a reflexive pronoun like sig to show who is being washed.
If the subject was plural (The boys wash themselves), would sig change to a plural form?
No, sig stays exactly the same! It is the reflexive pronoun for both the singular (himself, herself, itself) and the plural (themselves). So 'The boys wash themselves' would just be Drengene vasker sig.
Why does badeværelset end in a -t instead of -en like Drengen?
The base word for bathroom is et badeværelse, which is a neuter noun (an et word). To say 'the bathroom', we attach the article to the end. Since it already ends in an -e, we just add a -t to get badeværelset. Drengen comes from common gender word (en dreng), so it takes the -en ending.