Breakdown of Vil I hellere spise en kødfri middag i stedet for at stege kødet?
en
a / an (common)
spise
to eat
I
you (plural)
at
to
Questions & Answers about Vil I hellere spise en kødfri middag i stedet for at stege kødet?
Why do we use at stege (to fry) instead of an -ing word like in English?
In English we say "instead of frying", using an -ing verb after the preposition. In Danish, prepositions cannot be followed by an -ing form. Instead, you use the infinitive marker at plus the infinitive verb. That is why we say i stedet for at stege (literally: in place for to fry).
How does vil ... hellere translate to "would rather"?
The modal verb vil usually means "want to", and the adverb hellere means "rather" or "preferably". Combined, vil ... hellere is the natural way to express "would rather" or "prefer to" in Danish.
Why is the pronoun I capitalized here?
In Danish, I means "you" (plural). It is always capitalized to tell it apart from the lowercase word i, which means "in". Do not confuse it with the English word "I"!
Why does the word for meat appear as both kødfri and kødet?
kødfri is a compound adjective meaning "meat-free" (made from kød + fri). At the end of the sentence, kødet means "the meat", where -et is the definite article attached to the noun kød.