Word
Det er altid sværest at bedømme sine egne fejl.
Meaning
It is always hardest to judge one's own mistakes.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Lesson
Breakdown of Det er altid sværest at bedømme sine egne fejl.
være
to be
det
it (neuter)
sin
his/her/its own (common)
altid
always
Questions & Answers about Det er altid sværest at bedømme sine egne fejl.
Why does this sentence start with Det instead of the actual subject?
The real subject of this sentence is the long infinitive phrase at bedømme sine egne fejl (to judge one's own mistakes). Following the Weight Principle, Danish shifts this heavy subject to the end of the sentence to make it flow better. The dummy pronoun Det steps in to fill the normal subject slot at the beginning.
Why do we use sine here when there is no specific person mentioned as the subject?
Even in general statements where the subject is an implied 'one', Danish uses the reflexive possessive sin/sit/sine to refer back to that implied subject. It clarifies that the person doing the judging is looking at their own mistakes.
Fejl looks like a singular noun. How do we know it translates to the plural 'mistakes'?
Fejl is a zero-plural noun, meaning its singular and indefinite plural forms are identical (en fejl, flere fejl). You can tell it is plural here because the words modifying it, sine and egne, are both in their plural forms. If it were singular, it would be sin egen fejl.
Why is the superlative adjective written as sværest rather than sværeste?