Breakdown of Om eftermiddagen går hun til biblioteket, hvor hun møder sin veninde.
Questions & Answers about Om eftermiddagen går hun til biblioteket, hvor hun møder sin veninde.
In time expressions, om is often used for recurring or general times of day:
- om morgenen – in the morning(s)
- om aftenen – in the evening(s)
- om eftermiddagen – in the afternoon(s)
You would not normally say i eftermiddagen or på eftermiddagen.
i and på are common in other time phrases (i dag, i går, på mandag), but with parts of the day used in a habitual/generic sense, om + definite form is the standard pattern.
Time-of-day words like morgen, formiddag, eftermiddag, aften, nat usually take the definite form when used as general time expressions:
- om morgenen – in the morning
- om eftermiddagen – in the afternoon
- om aftenen – in the evening
So you almost always say om eftermiddagen, not om eftermiddag, when you talk about a regular or typical time of day.
The bare form eftermiddag is used mainly:
- with an article: en eftermiddag – an afternoon
- with another determiner: den her eftermiddag – this afternoon
Danish main clauses follow the V2 rule: the finite verb must be in second position, no matter what comes first.
In the sentence:
- Om eftermiddagen – first element (adverbial)
- går – verb (must be second)
- hun – subject
- til biblioteket – rest of the sentence
So after you move Om eftermiddagen to the front, går has to come next, and hun is pushed after the verb:
- Hun går til biblioteket. (normal order)
- Om eftermiddagen går hun til biblioteket. (adverbial fronted, verb still second)
Om eftermiddagen hun går… breaks the V2 rule and is ungrammatical in standard Danish.
After hvor in this sentence, you have a subordinate clause (a relative clause).
In Danish subordinate clauses, the word order is normally Subject – Verb – Object (no V2 rule):
- hun møder sin veninde
So:
- Main clause: Om eftermiddagen går hun til biblioteket… (V2: verb in second place)
- Subordinate clause: …, hvor hun møder sin veninde. (subject before verb)
hvor møder hun… would look like a main-clause question (Where does she meet…?) and is not correct here.
In this sentence, hvor is a relative adverb meaning where, referring back to biblioteket:
- biblioteket, hvor hun møder sin veninde
→ the library, where she meets her friend
It does not mean when here.
For when in a relative clause, Danish would typically use hvor only if it stands for “on/in which” with an implied time word, e.g.:
- den dag, hvor hun kom for sent – the day when she was late
(literally: the day where she came late)
So hvor can translate as where or, in some time expressions, as when, but grammatically it still points back to a noun (place or time) and cannot stand alone as a pure time word.
The part starting with hvor is a relative clause that gives more information about biblioteket. In Danish, relative clauses are separated from the main clause with a comma:
- …, hvor hun møder sin veninde.
According to current Danish comma rules, you must put a comma before som, der, hvor, etc. when they introduce a relative clause. So the comma here is obligatory.
The preposition tells you whether you are talking about movement towards a place or being at a place:
- til biblioteket – to the library (movement/direction)
- i / på biblioteket – in/at the library (location)
In this sentence, she is going to the library, so til is used:
- Hun går til biblioteket. – She goes to the library.
If you want to say she is at the library, you would say:
- Hun er på biblioteket. – She is at the library.
- Hun læser på biblioteket. – She is reading at the library.
Danish usually uses the definite form for specific, real-world institutions and places people regularly go to:
- biblioteket – the library
- skolen – the school
- supermarkedet – the supermarket
So til biblioteket means going to the library, typically the local or relevant library in the context.
Unlike some special nouns like skole, kirke, fængsel, which can lose the article in certain expressions (gå i skole, gå i kirke), bibliotek is normally used with the definite form when you talk about an actual visit:
- Jeg skal på biblioteket. – I’m going to the library.
sin/sit/sine are reflexive possessive pronouns. They refer back to the subject of the clause:
- Hun møder sin veninde. – She meets her (own) friend.
hendes is a non-reflexive possessive, meaning her, but not necessarily the subject’s own:
- Hun møder hendes veninde. – She meets her friend (someone else’s friend; sounds like it belongs to another woman previously mentioned).
In this sentence, we want to say that the friend belongs to hun (she), so sin is the correct choice.
Danish distinguishes friend nouns by gender:
- ven – (male) friend
- veninde – (female) friend
So:
- sin ven – her male friend
- sin veninde – her female friend
In this sentence, veninde tells you that the friend is female. If the friend’s gender is unknown or irrelevant, some speakers still use ven, but traditionally and in careful language the gender distinction is maintained.
Both verbs can be translated see/meet, but they are used differently:
- møde – to meet (often planned, or the first time you meet someone)
- Hun møder sin veninde. – She meets her friend (they meet up).
- se – to see (with your eyes; or to see/meet in a looser sense)
- Hun ser sin veninde på gaden. – She sees her friend in the street (she spots her).
In hvor hun møder sin veninde, the idea is that they meet up at the library, probably by arrangement or as a regular habit, so møder is more natural than ser.
gå primarily means to walk. So Hun går til biblioteket most literally means She walks to the library.
However, in everyday speech, gå can sometimes be used more loosely as go, without strong emphasis on the means of transport, especially over short distances. If you specifically want to say she goes by some other transport, you normally specify it:
- Hun tager bussen til biblioteket. – She takes the bus to the library.
- Hun cykler til biblioteket. – She bikes to the library.
In a textbook sentence like this, går is best understood as “walks”.