Learn Hardcore Danish: Flyet vil lande tidligt i lufthavnen i morgen. - The plane will land early at the airport tomorrow.

the present tense
- Flyet lander tidligt i morgen. = The plane lands early tomorrow.
or a modal verb like vil, skal, kommer til at
- infinitive
  - Flyet vil lande tidligt i morgen. = The plane will land early tomorrow.

“vil lande” is very close to English “will land”, and here it just marks a future event.

You can say:

Flyet lander tidligt i morgen.

This is also completely correct and very common in Danish. Using the plain present with a future time expression (i morgen) is often the most natural way to talk about the future, especially for scheduled events like planes and trains.

Nuance (very small here, often not important in everyday speech):

Flyet lander tidligt i morgen. – neutral description of a scheduled future fact.
Flyet vil lande tidligt i morgen. – can sound a tiny bit more like a prediction or statement of what will happen, but in many contexts they are interchangeable.

Does “vil” here mean “wants to”, like “the plane wants to land”?

No. vil can mean two main things:

Future-like “will”:
- Flyet vil lande tidligt i morgen.
  → The plane will land early tomorrow.
“Want to / intend to” when used with people:
- Jeg vil rejse til Danmark.
  → I want to travel to Denmark / I intend to travel to Denmark.

With inanimate subjects like flyet (the plane), vil is usually read as a future/predictive marker, not as “want”. A plane doesn’t literally “want” anything, so learners should understand vil here as “will”.

Why is it “lande” and not something like “lander” after “vil”?

In Danish, after a modal verb like vil, skal, kan, må, the main verb is used in its infinitive form (the “dictionary form”):

vil lande – will land
skal spise – shall eat / is going to eat
kan se – can see
må komme – may come

So:

Flyet lander = present tense, The plane lands / is landing
Flyet vil lande = vil (finite, conjugated) + lande (infinitive)

Only vil changes (takes the present tense form); lande stays in the infinitive.

Why does “flyet” mean “the plane” without a separate word for “the”?

Danish usually marks definiteness with an ending on the noun, not with a separate word like English the.

et fly = a plane (indefinite, singular, neuter)
flyet = the plane (definite, singular, neuter)

So:

Flyet vil lande … = The plane will land …

If it were just fly, that would typically be interpreted as “a plane”:

Et fly vil lande … = A plane will land …

Why is it “tidligt” and not “tidlig”?

The difference is:

tidlig – adjective form (used with nouns)
- en tidlig flyvetur = an early flight
tidligt – adverb form (used with verbs, adjectives, whole sentences)
- Flyet vil lande tidligt. = The plane will land early.

Here, tidligt describes how/when the action of landing happens, so it’s an adverb, and in Danish most adjectives take a -t ending when used as adverbs.

Does “i morgen” mean “tomorrow morning” or just “tomorrow”?

i morgen means simply “tomorrow” (any time during the day).

Flyet vil lande tidligt i morgen.
→ The plane will land early tomorrow (at some early time tomorrow, not specified).

If you want to be more specific about the morning, you can say:

i morgen tidlig – early tomorrow morning
- Flyet vil lande i morgen tidlig. = The plane will land early tomorrow morning.

Why is “i morgen” written as two words and not “imorgen”?

Correct standard spelling is two words: i morgen.

i = in
morgen = morning / tomorrow (context decides the meaning)

Together they have the idiomatic meaning “tomorrow”.

Writing “imorgen” as one word is a common learner error (and sometimes appears informally), but it is not standard Danish spelling.

Is the word order fixed? Could I say “Flyet vil tidligt lande i lufthavnen i morgen” or “I morgen vil flyet lande tidligt i lufthavnen”?

Danish has fairly strict word order rules, but there is still some flexibility.

Your original sentence is perfectly normal:
- Flyet vil lande tidligt i lufthavnen i morgen.
Moving the time expression to the front is also correct:
- I morgen vil flyet lande tidligt i lufthavnen.
This is common when you want to emphasize “tomorrow”.
But “Flyet vil tidligt lande i lufthavnen i morgen” is not natural word order. Adverbs like tidligt normally go after the infinitive verb group (vil lande), not in between:
- ✅ Flyet vil lande tidligt i lufthavnen i morgen.
- ❌ Flyet vil tidligt lande i lufthavnen i morgen.

Very rough guideline for main clauses:

Subject – finite verb – (other elements) – adverbs like “tidligt” – place – time

Although in practice time can appear both earlier and later in the sentence, especially if you want to emphasize it.

Why is it “i lufthavnen” and not “på lufthavnen”?

Danish uses “i” and “på” differently from English “in/at/on”, and it doesn’t always match English.

For lufthavn (airport), the normal preposition is:

i lufthavnen = at the airport / in the airport

Examples:

Jeg er i lufthavnen. = I am at the airport.
Flyet vil lande i lufthavnen. = The plane will land at the airport.

“på lufthavnen” is not standard and will sound wrong to native speakers.

Compare:

på stationen = at the station
på skolen = at school
i lufthavnen = at the airport

You simply have to learn the preposition that goes with each type of place.

Why is it “i lufthavnen” (with -en) and not just “i lufthavn”?

Just like flyet means “the plane”, lufthavnen means “the airport”:

en lufthavn = an airport
lufthavnen = the airport

When you talk about a specific, known location (the airport you have in mind), Danish normally uses the definite form:

i lufthavnen = at the airport (the specific airport)
i en lufthavn = in an airport (some airport or other, less specific)

In your sentence, you are clearly referring to some specific airport, so lufthavnen (definite) is natural.

Could I leave out either “i lufthavnen” or “i morgen” and still have a correct sentence?

Yes, both “i lufthavnen” and “i morgen” are optional adverbials that give extra information.

Examples:

Flyet vil lande tidligt i morgen.
→ The plane will land early tomorrow. (time, but no place)
Flyet vil lande tidligt i lufthavnen.
→ The plane will land early at the airport. (place, but no explicit “tomorrow”)
Flyet vil lande tidligt.
→ The plane will land early. (just the adverb “early”)

All of these are grammatically correct; they just include different amounts of information about place and time.

Are there other common ways to talk about the future in Danish besides “vil”?

Yes. Common options include:

Present tense + future time expression
- Flyet lander tidligt i morgen.
  → Very normal for scheduled events.
skal + infinitive
- Flyet skal lande tidligt i morgen.
  → Often more about plan/arrangement/obligation (is supposed to land).
kommer til at + infinitive
- Flyet kommer til at lande tidligt i morgen.
  → More like a prediction of what will (inevitably) happen.
vil + infinitive (your original)
- Flyet vil lande tidligt i morgen.
  → Neutral “will” / prediction.

In many everyday contexts, Danes especially like the plain present with a time expression.

How are the words in “Flyet vil lande tidligt i lufthavnen i morgen” roughly pronounced for an English speaker?

Very rough approximations (not perfect, but to give you an idea):

Flyet – a bit like “FLY-uh”, with u like German ü (rounded ee sound).
vil – close to “vil” in “vil-lage”, short i.
lande – like “LAN-neh”, with a soft unstressed -eh at the end.
tidligt – roughly “TEEL-leet”, but the d is soft (almost like l), and the final t can be weak.
i – like English “ee”.
lufthavnen – something like “LOOFT-hav-nen”, but the ft is often softened, and vowels are shorter than in English.
i morgen – roughly “ee MOR-en”, with r in the back of the throat and a weak final -en.

Actual Danish pronunciation involves soft consonants and reduced endings, so it will often sound more blurred and connected than these English-like renderings suggest.