Breakdown of Det er mig selv, der beslutter, om jeg vil arbejde alene eller sammen med et hold.
Questions & Answers about Det er mig selv, der beslutter, om jeg vil arbejde alene eller sammen med et hold.
The structure Det er X, der … is a common Danish cleft sentence used to add emphasis.
- Det er mig selv, der beslutter …
literally: It is myself who decides …
This pattern highlights who is doing the deciding. In English you might say:
- It’s me myself who decides whether…
- I, myself, am the one who decides whether…
Without the cleft, you could simply say:
- Jeg beslutter, om jeg vil arbejde alene eller sammen med et hold.
= I decide whether I want to work alone or with a team.
Both are correct, but the original sentence puts strong focus on mig selv (that it’s me and not someone else).
After er in this det er X construction, Danish normally uses the object form of the pronoun, not the subject form.
So you get:
- Det er mig. (It is me.) – not Det er jeg.
- Det er dig. (It is you.)
- Det er ham / hende / os / jer / dem.
This is similar to very natural spoken English: It’s me, not It is I.
So:
- Det er mig selv, der … = It is me myself who …
Here mig is correct because of this pattern Det er + object form.
Selv adds emphasis to the pronoun and often corresponds to “self” or “myself” in English.
- mig = me
- mig selv = me myself / myself (and not someone else)
In this sentence, mig selv underlines that I personally am the one deciding, not my boss, not colleagues, not anyone else.
So:
- Det er mig, der beslutter … = I am the one who decides …
- Det er mig selv, der beslutter … = I myself am the one who decides … (extra emphasis on me personally).
Here der is a relative pronoun introducing a relative clause that describes mig selv.
- Det er mig selv, der beslutter …
= It is me myself, who decides …
In this use:
- der ≈ who / that (when it refers to the subject of the relative clause)
Compare:
- Det er manden, der bor derovre.
It’s the man who lives over there.
In many cases you can also use som instead of der, but der is especially common when the relative pronoun is the subject of the clause:
- Det er mig selv, som beslutter … – also possible, but der is more typical here.
Danish uses commas more systematically before subordinate clauses than modern English does.
Comma before der
Det er mig selv, der beslutter …
The comma separates the main clause part Det er mig selv from the relative clause der beslutter ….Comma before om
… der beslutter, om jeg vil arbejde …
Here om jeg vil arbejde alene eller sammen med et hold is another subordinate clause introduced by om, so there is a comma before it.
Traditional Danish punctuation rules require (or at least strongly prefer) commas before most subordinate clauses. So both commas are normal and correct.
In this sentence, om means “whether”:
- … beslutter, om jeg vil arbejde alene eller sammen med et hold.
= … decide whether I want to work alone or with a team.
Compare:
- om = whether
- hvis = if (conditional)
- at = that (introducing statements)
- hvorvidt = also whether, but much more formal / written
Examples:
Jeg ved ikke, om han kommer.
I don’t know whether he’s coming.Hvis han kommer, bliver jeg glad.
If he comes, I’ll be happy. (condition)
So om is correct here because the idea is “whether I want to work alone or with a team,” not a conditional “if” and not just a “that”-clause.
In Danish subordinate clauses (introduced by words like om, at, fordi, når, hvis), the normal order is:
conjunction + subject + verb
So:
- om jeg vil arbejde …
whether I want to work …
This is different from main clauses, where Danish typically has V2 word order, meaning the verb is in second position:
- Jeg vil arbejde alene.
- I dag vil jeg arbejde alene.
But after om, you must switch to subordinate‑clause order:
- ✅ om jeg vil arbejde
- ❌ om vil jeg arbejde (incorrect in standard Danish)
Vil here expresses will / want to / intend to.
- jeg vil arbejde
can mean I want to work or I will work (intention).
In this context, the sentence is about choice and preference, so vil fits well:
- … om jeg vil arbejde alene eller sammen med et hold.
= … whether I want to work alone or with a team.
If you used:
- om jeg skal arbejde … – more like whether I have to work… (obligation).
- om jeg arbejder … – would sound incomplete or odd here; you normally need a modal (vil/skal) or a clearer context.
So vil arbejde is natural because the speaker is deciding what they want / choose to do.
Sammen med literally means “together with” and emphasizes the idea of working as part of or together with a team.
arbejde med et hold
= work with a team (could be more general; maybe associated with them)arbejde sammen med et hold
= work together with a team (more clearly side-by-side as team members)
In everyday speech, both med et hold and sammen med et hold can be used, but sammen med underlines the collaborative aspect a bit more clearly.
et hold here means a team (a group working or playing together).
- et hold = a team (quite general: sports team, project team, class group, etc.)
- et team = also used in Danish, often in business or corporate contexts; borrowed from English.
In this sentence:
- arbejde … sammen med et hold
= work together with a team
You could also say et team in many contexts; et hold is maybe a bit more general and slightly more “Danish” in flavour.
Yes, you can say both, and both are correct, but the focus of the emphasis shifts slightly.
Det er mig selv, der beslutter, om …
Emphasis is bundled into mig selv as a unit: me myself (not anybody else).Det er mig, der selv beslutter, om …
Here mig is emphasized as the person, and selv emphasizes the act of deciding is done by that person:- It’s me who decides myself / who makes the decision myself.
In everyday communication, the difference is subtle, and both would usually be understood the same way: I’m the one who decides (not others).