Drengen spiller brætspillet.

The boy plays the board game.

Breakdown of Drengen spiller brætspillet.

• spille: to play
• brætspillet: the board game
• drengen: the boy

Questions & Answers about Drengen spiller brætspillet.

Why does dreng become drengen?

Because Danish usually marks the by adding it to the end of the noun.

• dreng = boy
• drengen = the boy

This is called the postposed definite article.
For many common-gender nouns, the definite ending is -en.

So instead of a separate word like English the boy, Danish often says drengen.

Why does brætspil become brætspillet?

For the same reason: the noun is in the definite form.

• brætspil = board game
• brætspillet = the board game

Here the ending is -et, not -en, because spil is a neuter noun.

A useful pattern is:

• common gender: often -en in the definite singular
• neuter gender: often -et in the definite singular

So drengen and brætspillet both mean the ..., but they take different endings because the nouns belong to different genders.

Why is there no separate word for the in this sentence?