Breakdown of Tre år tidligere havde han boet i Odense.
han
he
bo
to live
i
in
have
to have
tre
three
året
the year
tidligere
earlier, previously; former
Questions & Answers about Tre år tidligere havde han boet i Odense.
Why is the word order havde han instead of han havde?
Because the sentence starts with the time phrase Tre år tidligere (Three years earlier). Danish uses the V2 or verb-second rule, which means the conjugated verb must be the second main element in the sentence. To make this happen, the auxiliary verb havde swaps places with the subject han.
How is the word tidligere formed?
Tidligere means earlier or previously. It is the comparative form of the word tidlig (early). Just like in English where you add -er to make earlier, Danish adds the ending -ere to form the comparative.
What tense is havde boet and how is it used?
This is the past perfect tense, which translates directly to had lived. Just like in English, you use it to talk about an action that was completed before another event in the past. It is built using the past tense of at have (havde) plus the past participle of the main verb (boet).
Why does the verb boet end in a -t?
Boet is the past participle of at bo (to live). When building the past perfect tense with havde, you must use the past participle. For a short verb like at bo where the stem ends in a vowel, you usually form the past participle by simply adding a -t to the end.
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