Breakdown of Min søsters hund sover på puden i stuen.
Questions & Answers about Min søsters hund sover på puden i stuen.
Danish marks possession by adding -s directly to the noun, just like English does, but without an apostrophe and without changing word order.
- min søster = my sister
- min søsters hund = my sister’s dog (literally: my sister’s dog)
You must include the -s on the possessor (søster → søsters). Saying “Min søster hund” is ungrammatical; you always need that -s.
Danish does not use an apostrophe for normal possessive -s on nouns.
- English: sister’s dog
- Danish: søsters hund
You only write søsters, never søster’s. The apostrophe in this function is basically an English-only spelling habit; Danish just adds s.
The form of “my” in Danish agrees with the gender and number of the possessed noun, not with the person who owns it.
- en hund (a dog) → common gender, singular
So you must use min (for singular common gender nouns):
- min hund = my dog
- min søsters hund = my sister’s dog
Other forms are:
- mit → for singular neuter nouns (e.g. mit hus – my house)
- mine → for all plurals (e.g. mine hunde – my dogs)
Here, the possessed noun is hund, so you choose min.
In Danish, possessives (min, din, hans, hendes, etc.) and articles (en, et, den, det) normally don’t combine. You generally choose either a possessive or a definite article, not both.
- hunden = the dog
- min hund = my dog (never min hunden in normal speech)
So:
- Min søsters hund = my sister’s dog
(You wouldn’t say “Min søsters hunden”.)
The possessive already gives enough specificity, so no extra “the” is used with hund.
In Danish, “the” is usually attached to the end of the noun instead of being a separate word:
- en pude = a pillow → puden = the pillow
- en stue = a living room → stuen = the living room
So på puden i stuen literally means:
- på puden = on the pillow
- i stuen = in the living room
The -en ending is the definite suffix for most common gender (en-) nouns. Here:
- pude → puden
- stue → stuen
In this context, Danish prefers the definite form to refer to a specific pillow that is identifiable to the speakers (often the pillow we both know about).
- på en pude = on a pillow (some pillow, not specific)
- på puden = on the pillow (a specific one)
Since English also says “on the pillow” here, Danish uses puden rather than pude. Using the indefinite (på en pude) would sound like you don’t care which pillow, just any random pillow.
Both på and i can correspond to English “in/on/at”, but they’re used with different kinds of locations.
- på = on (on top of something) or at (certain fixed places: på arbejde, på skole, på café, etc.)
- i = in / inside (enclosed or room-like spaces, cities, countries, etc.)
So:
- på puden = on the pillow (dog lying on top of the pillow)
- i stuen = in the living room (inside the room)
You’re describing where the dog is on, and in what room that object is located.
Yes, word order matters a lot in Danish. The neutral word order in a main clause is:
Subject – Verb – (Rest)
So the natural sentence is:
- Min søsters hund sover på puden i stuen.
- Subject: Min søsters hund
- Verb: sover
- Rest: på puden i stuen
“Min søsters hund i stuen sover på puden” is technically possible, but it sounds unusual and marked, as if “in the living room” is extra, contrastive information about which sister’s dog, or you’re doing some stylistic emphasis. For a normal, neutral statement, keep:
- Min søsters hund sover …
Danish does not form the present progressive (“is sleeping”) with “to be” + -ing the way English does. Most of the time, simple present in Danish covers both English:
- sleeps
- is sleeping
So:
- Min søsters hund sover
can mean both- My sister’s dog sleeps (general habit)
- My sister’s dog is sleeping (right now)
You only say er + verb with a special form in certain constructions (e.g., er ved at sove = is in the process of falling asleep), but not as a direct equivalent of English “is sleeping.”
All four nouns here are common gender (also called n-words), which take en as the indefinite article:
- en hund (a dog) → hunden (the dog)
- en pude (a pillow) → puden (the pillow)
- en stue (a living room) → stuen (the living room)
- en søster (a sister) → søsteren (the sister)
Gender matters because it affects:
The article:
- common gender: en
- neuter: et
The possessive form of “my”:
- min for singular common gender (min hund, min søster, min pude, min stue)
- mit for singular neuter (mit hus)
Since all the nouns here are en-words, they all use min and the definite -en ending.
Using the same nouns:
en pude (a pillow)
- puder = pillows
- puderne = the pillows
en stue (a living room)
- stuer = living rooms
- stuerne = the living rooms
For hund and søster:
en hund
- hunde = dogs
- hundene = the dogs
en søster
- søstre = sisters
- søstrene = the sisters
So, for example:
- Mine søstres hunde sover på puderne i stuerne.
= My sisters’ dogs are sleeping on the pillows in the living rooms.
The vowel ø is a single Danish vowel that doesn’t exist in standard English. It’s similar to:
- the vowel in French “peu”, German “schön”, or
- an English vowel somewhere between “bird” (without the r) and “sir” (again without the *r), but with rounded lips.
To approximate it:
- Say the vowel in “say” or “bed”.
- While keeping your tongue in that position, round your lips as if you were going to say “oo”.
That rounded e-like sound is close to Danish ø.
So søster is roughly like “SØS-ter” with that rounded vowel in the first syllable.
The noun stue in Danish specifically means a living room / sitting room, not just “room” in general. For “room” in general, the word is typically værelse or rum depending on context.
- stue = living room
- et værelse = (bed)room, room in a home
- et rum = room/space more generally
So:
- i stuen = in the living room
- i værelset = in the (bed)room
- i rummet = in the room/space
In “Min søsters hund sover på puden i stuen,” the natural English is “in the living room.”