Learn Hardcore Danish: Universitetet ligger langt fra min lejlighed, så jeg tager toget. - The university is far from my apartment, so I take the train.

You could say Universitetet er langt fra min lejlighed, but ligger sounds more natural for a building’s location on a map. It emphasizes position rather than just “being.”

Why is it Universitetet and toget, with -et at the end?

Danish usually marks definiteness with an ending (a “definite suffix”) on the noun:

universitet = a university
universitetet = the university
tog = a train
toget = the train

So:

Universitetet ligger… = The university is located…
…så jeg tager toget. = …so I take the train.

This matches English here: the university, the train.

(There is also a separate article et/en, but that’s for the indefinite: et tog = a train, et universitet = a university.)

Could you say “Universitetet er langt fra min lejlighed” instead? Is it wrong?

It’s not wrong; it’s just slightly less idiomatic.

Universitetet ligger langt fra min lejlighed – natural, standard way to talk about where a building is located.
Universitetet er langt fra min lejlighed – grammatically fine, but many Danes would simply prefer ligger in this context.

Think of ligger as “is (situated)” or “is located” in this kind of sentence.

What exactly does langt fra mean? Why not just fra?

fra = from
langt = far (adverb here)

Together, langt fra = far from.

If you said only fra min lejlighed, that would mean just “from my apartment” and you’d lose the idea of distance.

You can also say:

langt væk fra min lejlighed = far away from my apartment
This is a bit more emphatic but very common and correct as well.

Why is it min lejlighed and not mit lejlighed?

In Danish, the possessives min/mit/mine agree with the gender and number of the noun:

min = my (for common-gender singular nouns)
mit = my (for neuter singular nouns)
mine = my (for all plurals)

lejlighed (apartment) is common gender, so:

en lejlighed = an apartment
min lejlighed = my apartment

Compare:

et hus (a house) → mit hus (my house) – neuter
bøger (books) → mine bøger (my books) – plural

Why is there a comma before så?

In this sentence, så is a coordinating conjunction meaning “so / therefore,” connecting two main clauses:

Universitetet ligger langt fra min lejlighed,
så jeg tager toget.

Danish normally puts a comma between two independent clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction like og, men, eller, for, så (and, but, or, for/because, so).

So the comma marks: “…far from my apartment, so I take the train.”

What does så mean here, and are there other meanings?

Here så means “so / therefore”:

Universitetet ligger langt fra min lejlighed, så jeg tager toget.
= The university is far from my apartment, so I take the train.

But så has other common uses:

så = then/after that:
Først spiser vi, så går vi. – First we eat, then we go.
så in comparisons:
så stor som – as big as
så as an intensifier:
Det er så godt! – It’s so good!

In your sentence, it’s the “so / therefore” use.

Why is it jeg tager toget and not jeg kører toget or jeg rejser med toget?

All of these exist, but they differ in meaning:

jeg tager toget
Literally “I take the train,” and this is the normal everyday way to say you use the train as transport.
jeg kører toget
Means “I drive the train” – this sounds like you are the train driver.
jeg kører med toget or jeg kører med tog
Means “I travel by train / go by train.” Also correct, but tager toget is shorter and very common.
jeg rejser med toget
“I travel by train.” More about a longer journey or travel in general, not just commuting.

So tager toget is the standard choice here.

Why is it toget (definite) and not just tog (indefinite)? In English we say “I take the train” and also “I take the train to work” in a general sense.

Danish behaves similarly to English here: with common means of transport, the definite form is very typical:

Jeg tager toget. – I take the train.
Jeg tager bussen. – I take the bus.
Jeg tager bilen. – I take the car.

Saying jeg tager tog (without et) is unusual and sounds incomplete. You’d normally:

either use the definite: tager toget
or use a different structure: rejser med tog, kører med tog (“travel by train”)

So the -et is needed in this wording.

Is the word order “så jeg tager toget” special because Danish is a V2 language?

In så jeg tager toget, the word order is:

så – conjunction
jeg – subject
tager – verb
toget – object

This follows the normal S–V–O order for a main clause. In Danish, “V2” means the finite verb comes second element in main clauses, and here it does:

First element: jeg (subject)
Second element: tager (verb)

The så here is a coordinating conjunction, not a sentence adverb placed in first position, so it doesn’t itself count as the “first element” of the main clause for V2 purposes. So “så jeg tager toget” is fully normal and correct.

Does tager here mean something like “I usually take the train”, or only right now?

Danish present tense can express:

an action happening now, or
a habit / regular action, just like English simple present.

In context, Universitetet ligger langt fra min lejlighed, så jeg tager toget is usually understood as a habitual statement:

The university is far from my apartment, so I (normally) take the train.

If you wanted to make it clearly about right now, you might add a time expression:

…så jeg tager toget i dag. – …so I’m taking the train today.