Questions & Answers about Han har en meget speciel humor.
Why does the Danish sentence just use humor instead of translating the English phrase "sense of humor"?
In Danish, the word humor covers both the abstract concept of comedy and a person's individual "sense of humor". Trying to translate it literally as sans for humor sounds unnatural to a native speaker, so you just say someone has a certain humor.
Does speciel mean "special" or "peculiar" in this sentence?
In this context, it leans heavily toward "peculiar" or "quirky". When describing people or their personality traits, speciel often carries the connotation of being a bit strange or unusual. If you wanted to say someone's humor was exceptionally good in a purely positive way, you would more likely use fantastisk or særlig.
Why do we use the article en before humor? Isn't it an uncountable concept?
While humor is generally an uncountable concept, it becomes countable and takes an article when you are describing a specific type or style of it with an adjective. This works exactly like English, where you say "a peculiar sense of humor" rather than just "peculiar sense of humor".
Why isn't there a '-t' at the end of speciel?
Adjectives in Danish must agree with the gender of the noun they modify. Because humor is a common-gender word (en humor), the adjective stays in its basic form (speciel). You would only add a '-t' (specielt) if it were describing a neuter-gender word, such as in the phrase et specielt smil (a peculiar smile).