Learn Hardcore Danish: Vi har lige spist aftensmad, så vi er meget mætte. - We have just eaten dinner, so we are very full.

Kan du lige hjælpe mig? – Can you just / quickly help me?
Gå lige væk. – Just move away for a second.
Lige nu – right now
lige as “straight / even” in math or shapes (e.g. en lige linje = a straight line)

So the core idea is something like “just / briefly / straight / exactly”, but here it’s specifically “just (recently)”.

Why is it har spist and not spiser or spiste?

Danish uses the present perfect (har spist) in almost exactly the same way as English have eaten / have just eaten, especially when:

the action is recent, and
the result is still relevant now (we are full now because of it).

So:

Vi har lige spist aftensmad.
→ literally: We have just eaten dinner.

You could say:

Vi spiste aftensmad. – We ate dinner.

…but that normally sounds more like a past narrative (telling a story about earlier today, yesterday, etc.), and it doesn’t automatically highlight the present result (“so now we’re full”).

Using har spist fits very naturally with lige and with the second clause vi er meget mætte (we are very full now).

Why is lige placed between har and spist? Could it go somewhere else?

In Danish, many adverbs (including lige) normally go between the auxiliary verb and the main verb:

Vi har lige spist aftensmad.
(har = auxiliary, spist = main verb)

Some other common adverbs in the same slot: aldrig, ofte, snart, ikke
→ Vi har aldrig spist her før. – We have never eaten here before.

You cannot move lige freely to the end like in English:

✗ Vi har spist aftensmad lige. – incorrect
✓ Vi har lige spist aftensmad. – correct

You might sometimes see Vi spiste lige aftensmad, where lige then comes after a simple past verb (spiste), but in your sentence, with har spist, the normal place is har lige spist.

Why is there no article in spist aftensmad? Why not spist en aftensmad?

Meals in Danish are usually treated like mass nouns and used without an article when you mean “the meal in general”:

spise morgenmad – to eat breakfast
spise frokost – to eat lunch
spise aftensmad – to eat dinner

So:

Vi har lige spist aftensmad.
→ We have just eaten dinner.

If you say aftensmaden (with definite ending -en), you refer to a specific dinner, like “the dinner (we had planned / talked about)”:

Vi har lige spist aftensmaden.
→ We have just eaten the dinner (a particular one).

En aftensmad is almost never used; it sounds wrong in this meaning. Think of aftensmad more like “dinner (as an event)” rather than a countable thing.

Does aftensmad mean lunch or dinner? I’ve also seen middag.

In modern standard Danish:

aftensmad = the evening meal, equivalent to dinner / supper.
frokost = lunch.
morgenmad = breakfast.

Middag is a bit tricky:

Historically it meant the main meal of the day, which used to be at midday in some places, so in some dialects middag can mean something like “dinner” (main meal), sometimes eaten at noon.
In modern everyday Danish, people more often say aftensmad for the evening meal.

If you just want to say “we ate dinner (in the evening)”, aftensmad is the safe, standard choice.

What is the role of så in ..., så vi er meget mætte? Is the word order after så special?

Here så is a coordinating conjunction meaning “so / therefore”:

Vi har lige spist aftensmad, så vi er meget mætte.
→ We have just eaten dinner, so we are very full.

As a coordinating conjunction, så does not change the word order of the following clause; that clause still starts with the subject:

… så vi er meget mætte. (subject vi before verb er)

Compare with så used as an adverb meaning “then”, which does cause inversion (verb before subject):

Først spiser vi, så er vi mætte.
First we eat, then we are full.

So:

så vi er… = “so we are…” (conjunction, no inversion)
så er vi… = “then we are…” (adverb, inversion)

What does mætte mean, and how is it different from fulde / fuld?

mæt / mætte means “full (from eating)”, “satisfied” with food:

Jeg er mæt. – I’m full. (singular)
Vi er mætte. – We are full. (plural, as in your sentence)

fuld / fulde can mean “full” in some contexts (a full glass: et fuldt glas),
but “jeg er fuld” in everyday speech almost always means “I’m drunk”.

So:

Vi er meget mætte. – We are very full (after eating).
Vi er meget fulde. – We are very drunk.

To talk about being full from food, always use mæt / mætte, not fuld / fulde.

Why is it mætte and not mæt?

Adjectives in Danish agree with number (and sometimes gender/definiteness) of the noun or pronoun they describe.

mæt = singular common-gender form
- Jeg er mæt. – I am full.
- Han er mæt. – He is full.
- Hun er mæt. – She is full.
mætte = plural form
- Vi er mætte. – We are full.
- De er mætte. – They are full.

So in your sentence, vi (we) is plural, so the adjective must be plural: mætte.

Could I say just Vi er mætte instead of Vi er meget mætte? What’s the difference?

Yes, you can say both:

Vi er mætte. – We are full.
Vi er meget mætte. – We are very full.

meget simply intensifies the adjective, like English very:

meget træt – very tired
meget glad – very happy
meget mæt / mætte – very full

So meget is optional; it just adds strength.

Is meget always “very”? I’ve seen it used differently.

In your sentence, meget works exactly like very:

meget mætte = very full.

But meget has two main uses:

As an adverb before adjectives/adverbs → very / really
- meget god – very good
- meget træt – very tired
As a quantifier → much / a lot (of)
- meget vand – much water / a lot of water
- meget tid – a lot of time
- Hun læser meget. – She reads a lot.

Here it’s clearly use (1): meget + adjective (mætte).

Could I say Vi har lige haft aftensmad instead of Vi har lige spist aftensmad?

You might hear have aftensmad in some informal contexts, but the natural, standard way to say this is:

spise aftensmad – to eat dinner

So:

Vi har lige spist aftensmad.
is the normal, idiomatic version.

Vi har lige haft aftensmad could be understood, but it sounds a bit unusual or influenced by English “have had dinner”. For good Danish, stick to spise aftensmad.

Why is there a comma before så?

Because så here joins two main clauses:

Vi har lige spist aftensmad
vi er meget mætte

In traditional Danish comma rules, you normally put a comma before coordinating conjunctions (og, men, eller, for, så) when they join main clauses:

Vi har lige spist aftensmad, så vi er meget mætte.

In the newer “optional” comma system, the comma is still allowed and very common here. Most native writers would keep it in this sentence.