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Questions & Answers about Hvem myrdede manden?
Couldn't this sentence also mean 'Whom did the man murder?'?
Yes, it absolutely could! Because Danish doesn't use a helper verb like 'do' or 'did' to frame questions, and hvem doesn't change form between subject and object, the word order here is ambiguous. Without context, people usually assume the first word is the subject ('Who murdered the man?'), but if the context implies the man is the killer, it means 'Whom did the man murder?'.
If it is ambiguous, how would I clearly say 'Whom did the man murder?' without relying on context?
Danes often use a structure called a cleft sentence to make the roles perfectly clear. You could say Hvem var det, manden myrdede? (literally: 'Who was it the man murdered?'). This firmly places manden as the subject of the action.
How would I change this to ask 'Who was murdered by the man?'
You would switch to the passive voice. While you could use the s-passive (Hvem myrdedes af manden?), the most natural way in spoken Danish is to use the blive-passive: Hvem blev myrdet af manden?.
Why does the past tense of this verb end in -ede rather than -te?
The infinitive is at myrde. It belongs to Group 1 of regular Danish verbs, which always form their past tense by adding -ede to the stem. Group 2 verbs are the ones that take -te (like at købe becoming købte). Note that in natural speech, the -ede ending is heavily reduced and often swallowed.