Breakdown of Hvis den gamle skjorte var plettet, ville jeg smide den væk.
jeg
I
være
to be
den
it (common)
skjorten
the shirt
gammel
old
ville
want to / will
hvis
if
smide
to throw
væk
away (gone)
plettet
stained
Questions & Answers about Hvis den gamle skjorte var plettet, ville jeg smide den væk.
Why is it plettet here when skjorte is a common gender word (en skjorte)?
Usually, adjectives matching a common gender noun take no ending. However, plettet belongs to a special group of adjectives derived from verbs that end in -et. For these adjectives, the common gender form keeps the -et ending rather than dropping it. You use the exact same form for neuter nouns.
Why does the sentence use the past tense verbs var and ville smide for a hypothetical situation?
Just like in English, Danish uses the past tense to express an unreal conditional. Using the past forms var (was/were) and ville (would) shows that this is an imagined scenario about the present or future, rather than an event that actually happened in the past.
Why is the pronoun den placed between smide and væk?
When a phrasal verb like smide væk (throw away) has a pronoun as its object, the pronoun must go between the verb and the particle. You cannot put the pronoun at the very end of the phrase.
Why is the word order ville jeg instead of jeg ville?
This happens because of the V2 (verb-second) rule. The entire dependent clause (Hvis den gamle skjorte var plettet) acts as the first element of the main sentence. The main verb ville must take the second position, which pushes the subject jeg into the third position.
Why do we use gamle instead of gammel here?
Because the noun phrase is definite. Whenever you use a freestanding definite article like den, the following adjective must be in its definite form, which almost always ends in -e.
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