Breakdown of I dag lærer vi om det refleksive ejestedord “sin, sit, sine”.
Questions & Answers about I dag lærer vi om det refleksive ejestedord “sin, sit, sine”.
Both are correct; this is a word-order choice.
- I dag lærer vi om … = Today we’re learning about … (focus on today).
- Vi lærer i dag om … = We’re learning today about … (focus more on we / the action).
Danish main clauses follow the V2 rule: the verb must be in second position.
So:
- I dag (1st position)
- lærer (verb, 2nd position)
- vi (subject, 3rd position)
You can move other elements (like I dag) to first position, but the conjugated verb stays second.
Lærer is the present tense of at lære (to learn).
Danish present tense often covers:
- simple present: We learn about…
- present continuous: We are learning about…
- near future (especially with a time word like i dag): We’re learning (will learn) today about…
So I dag lærer vi om … can naturally be translated as:
- Today we’re learning about … or
- Today we’ll be learning about …
Danish does not use a separate auxiliary like “are” to form the present continuous.
- English: We are learning
- Danish: Vi lærer
The single verb lærer already expresses “are learning” in context.
There is no vi er lærer or vi er lærende here – that would be wrong or at least very odd in modern Danish for this meaning.
With at lære meaning to learn about (a topic), Danish normally uses om:
- at lære om grammatik – to learn about grammar
- I dag lærer vi om det refleksive ejestedord … – Today we learn about the reflexive possessive pronoun…
If you remove om:
- lærer vi det refleksive ejestedord
sounds like we teach the reflexive possessive pronoun or we learn it by heart – it’s not the natural way to say “learn about” a topic.
So for “learn about X”, keep om.
Break it down:
- det – the (neuter singular article)
- refleksive – reflexive
- ejestedord – literally possessing-word → a possessive pronoun / determiner
So det refleksive ejestedord is:
“the reflexive possessive pronoun” (or reflexive possessive determiner).
It refers to the special possessive forms sin, sit, sine that refer back to the subject of the clause.
Because the sentence is talking about one grammatical category, not counting the individual forms.
Think:
- the reflexive possessive pronoun “sin, sit, sine”
Danish treats ejestedord here as a type of word in general (neuter, singular), hence det.
The three forms sin, sit, sine are different forms of that one reflexive possessive pronoun.
- Sin / sit / sine = reflexive possessive: the thing belongs to the subject of the same clause.
- Hans / hendes / deres = non‑reflexive possessive: the thing belongs to someone else (not the subject), or you want to emphasize that.
Example:
Peter elsker sin hund.
= Peter loves his (own) dog.Peter elsker hans hund.
Normally understood as: Peter loves some other man’s dog (not his own).
So sin/sit/sine always point back to the grammatical subject, while hans/hendes/deres do not.
They agree with the noun they modify, not with the owner.
- sin: before a common gender (en‑word) singular noun
- sin bog – his/her own book (en bog)
- sit: before a neuter (et‑word) singular noun
- sit hus – his/her own house (et hus)
- sine: before plural nouns (any gender)
- sine bøger – his/her own books
- sine huse – his/her own houses
Subject doesn’t matter for choosing sin/sit/sine; the possessed noun does.
Danish frequently forms compound nouns by writing them as one word:
- eje – to own / possess
- sted – place
- ord – word
Historically: a word that “places” ownership → ejestedord.
So where English often has a noun + noun phrase (possessive pronoun), Danish typically combines them into one compound noun.
- I dag literally = in day → “today”.
- It is normally written as two words in standard Danish (though you may see idag informally).
- The I is capitalized here only because it is the first word of the sentence, not because I dag is a proper noun.
In the middle of a sentence, you’d write:
- Vi mødes i dag. – We’re meeting today.
Yes, that’s also correct, but there’s a nuance:
I dag lærer vi om …
→ Present tense; sounds like a plan or description of what’s happening today, quite neutral.I dag skal vi lære om …
→ Uses skal, suggests a scheduled/obligatory activity (like a lesson plan):
Today we are going to learn about … / Today we’re supposed to learn about …
Both are fine in a classroom context; skal adds more of a “that’s on today’s program” feeling.
They are being mentioned as words rather than used in a normal sentence.
Quotation marks (or sometimes italics) are used to highlight linguistic items:
- I dag lærer vi om det refleksive ejestedord “sin, sit, sine”.
= Today we’re learning about the reflexive possessive pronoun, namely the forms sin, sit, sine.
It tells you: These are the forms we will talk about, not part of the main clause’s grammar.