Jeg vil selv lave maden i aften.

I will make the food myself tonight.

Breakdown of Jeg vil selv lave maden i aften.

• jeg: I
• maden: the food
• ville: to want
• lave: to make
• i aften: tonight
• selv: itself

Questions & Answers about Jeg vil selv lave maden i aften.

What exactly does vil mean here – is it “want to” or “will”?

Vil can mean both “want to” and “will / be going to”, depending on context.

In Jeg vil selv lave maden i aften, it usually expresses:

• intention / willingness: I want to / I’ll (of my own accord) make the food myself tonight.

English forces you to choose between “want to” and “will”, but Danish vil comfortably covers both:

• Jeg vil hjem nu. – I want to go home now / I’m going home now (I’ve decided).
• Vil du med? – Do you want to come along?

So here, think: “I intend to / I want to be the one who cooks tonight.”

Why is it vil lave and not vil at lave or vil laver?

Danish modals (like vil, skal, kan, må) are followed by a bare infinitive (without at) and not by a conjugated verb.

• vil
  • lave (infinitive) ✅
• vil at lave ❌
• vil laver ❌

Pattern:

• Jeg vil spise. – I want to eat / I’ll eat.
• Jeg kan tale dansk. – I can speak Danish.
• Jeg skal arbejde i morgen. – I have to work tomorrow.

So vil lave is “modal + infinitive,” which is the standard structure in Danish.

What does selv mean in this sentence?

Selv means “myself / oneself” in the sense of doing it personally, not necessarily physically alone.

In Jeg vil selv lave maden i aften it adds the idea:

• I (and not someone else) want to be the one who cooks tonight.

It emphasizes:

• who is responsible, not whether anyone else is present in the kitchen.

Compare:

• Jeg vil lave maden i aften. – I’ll cook the food tonight. (neutral)
• Jeg vil selv lave maden i aften. – I’ll cook the food myself tonight. (Don’t let anyone else do it; I insist.)

Why is selv before lave? Could it go somewhere else?

The most neutral, common place for selv here is right after the modal verb vil, before the infinitive lave:

• Jeg vil selv lave maden i aften. ✅

This puts the focus on jeg (I), as the one doing the action.

Other positions are possible, with slight changes in emphasis:

• Jeg vil lave maden selv i aften. – Also correct; here selv leans a bit more on “do the cooking myself (not ordering takeout / not getting help).”
• Jeg vil i aften selv lave maden. – Grammatically okay, but sounds more formal/marked; strong emphasis that tonight it’s you, yourself, who will cook.

For everyday speech, Jeg vil selv lave maden i aften is the most natural version.

Why is it lave and not laver?

Lave is the infinitive, and laver is the present tense.

• Jeg laver maden. – I’m making the food / I make the food. (main verb, present tense)
• Jeg vil lave maden. – I want to make the food / I’ll make the food. (modal + infinitive)

After a modal like vil, you must use the infinitive:

• vil lave, kan lave, skal lave, etc.

So lave here is correct because vil is already carrying the tense (present).

Why is it maden and not just mad?

Mad = food / a meal (general, indefinite).
Maden = the food / the meal (definite).

Danish usually marks definiteness by adding a suffix to the noun:

• mad – food
• maden – the food
• bil – car
• bilen – the car

So Jeg vil selv lave maden i aften more literally is:

• I want to cook *the food myself tonight = I want to cook **the meal myself tonight.*

If you left it as mad:

• Jeg vil selv lave mad i aften. – I’ll cook (some) food myself tonight.
  Also correct, but now it’s more general (not a specific meal already known in the context).

Can maden also mean “the meal”, not just “the food”?

Yes. In everyday Danish, mad / maden often refers to a meal as well as to food in general.

So Jeg vil selv lave maden i aften is naturally understood as:

• I want to make *dinner myself tonight* (or whatever main meal is implied by the context).

It doesn’t sound like you’re just cooking some random food; it sounds like you’re taking responsibility for the evening meal.

What does i aften mean exactly, and how is it different from i aftes, i nat, etc.?

I aften = this evening / tonight (from early evening until bedtime, future or upcoming time).

Other related expressions:

• i aftes – last night / last evening (past)
• i nat – tonight (in the nighttime sense, often when you’re asleep)
• i morgen aften – tomorrow evening / tomorrow night
• i morges – this morning (earlier today, in the morning)

So:

• Jeg vil selv lave maden i aften. – I’ll cook the meal myself tonight (this evening).
• Jeg lavede selv maden i aftes. – I cooked the meal myself last night.
• Jeg vågnede i nat. – I woke up in the night / last night (during the night).

Why is i aften at the end? Could I say I aften vil jeg selv lave maden?

Both are grammatically correct:

• Jeg vil selv lave maden i aften. ✅ (very normal, neutral)
• I aften vil jeg selv lave maden. ✅ (slight emphasis on tonight)

Danish main clauses are V2 (the verb is the second element). If you start with a time phrase, the verb must still come second:

• I aften (1st element) vil (2nd element) jeg selv lave maden …

Placing the time expression at the end (… maden i aften) is extremely common and sounds very natural in conversation.

How would I make this sentence negative? Where does ikke go?

Negation ikke normally goes after the conjugated verb (vil) and before most of the rest:

• Jeg vil ikke selv lave maden i aften.
  I don’t want to make the meal myself tonight / I won’t make the meal myself tonight.

You can still keep selv:

• Jeg vil ikke selv lave maden i aften. – Emphasis that you won’t be the one cooking.

Or drop selv if it’s not important:

• Jeg vil ikke lave maden i aften. – I don’t want to cook tonight / I won’t cook tonight.

How would I turn this into a question like “Will you cook the food yourself tonight?”?

You turn jeg into du and keep the same structure. In Danish, yes/no questions usually just put the verb first:

• Vil du selv lave maden i aften?
  – Will you cook the meal yourself tonight? / Do you want to cook the meal yourself tonight?

Other variants:

• Vil du lave maden selv i aften? – Also correct, a slightly different nuance of emphasis.
• Vil du lave mad i aften? – Will you cook tonight? (without selv, more general)

Why is the preposition i used in i aften? Is it always i for times like this?

In i aften, i literally means “in”, just like in English “in the evening”, but the whole phrase is best translated as “tonight / this evening”.

Danish often uses i with parts of the day and similar time words:

• i dag – today (literally “in day”)
• i går – yesterday (historically “in year/day gone by”)
• i morgen – tomorrow
• i morges – this morning (earlier today)
• i aften – this evening / tonight
• i nat – tonight (during the night)

So i is very common in fixed time expressions, and learners mostly just memorize these as chunks.