Learn Danish: Pigen tørrede gulvet i køkkenet. - The girl dried the floor in the kitchen.

Even though this lesson focuses on sig (oneself), we only use it when the subject does an action to themselves. Here, the girl is drying an external object, which is gulvet. If she were drying herself after a swim, the sentence would be Pigen tørrede sig.

Is tørrede in the past tense?

Yes. The infinitive (dictionary form) is at tørre, which means to dry or to wipe. It is a regular verb, so it simply adds -de to the end to form the past tense tørrede.

Why do both gulvet and køkkenet end in -et?

Both gulv (floor) and køkken (kitchen) are neuter nouns, which are often called et-words. To say the floor and the kitchen, the article et attaches to the end of the words as a definite suffix.

Does the double K in køkkenet change how the word sounds?

Yes, a double consonant in Danish usually indicates that the vowel immediately before it is short. Because of the double K, the ø in køkkenet is pronounced with a short, crisp sound.