Breakdown of Drengen fumlede og kom til at lave en skrivefejl.
og
and
en
a / an (common)
drengen
the boy
lave
to make; to do (an activity)
komme til at
to inevitably happen / to accidentally do
fumle
to fumble
skrivefejlen
the typo
Questions & Answers about Drengen fumlede og kom til at lave en skrivefejl.
I thought komme til at was used to talk about the future. Why does it mean "accidentally" here?
You are right that in the present tense, kommer til at usually expresses a future action (like "is going to"). However, when used in the past tense (kom til at), it shifts meaning and becomes the standard Danish way to express that someone did something by accident or without intending to.
Could I just say Drengen lavede en skrivefejl to mean the same thing?
Not quite. Drengen lavede en skrivefejl simply states the fact: "The boy made a typo." By using kom til at before the infinitive lave, you emphasize the accidental nature of the action, which pairs perfectly with the clumsiness implied by the first verb, fumlede (fumbled).
Why do we use the verb lave with en skrivefejl instead of a word for "write"?
In Danish, you "make" a mistake, which translates to the collocation lave en fejl. Since en skrivefejl (a typo or writing error) is a type of mistake, it naturally takes the verb lave.
Why isn't there a pronoun like han (he) after og?
The conjunction og (and) here joins two past tense verbs (fumlede and kom) that share the exact same subject (Drengen). When the subject remains the same across both actions, Danish typically drops the pronoun in the second clause, just like we do in English.
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