Breakdown of Hvis jeg bliver træt, vil jeg slukke lyset og gå i seng.
Questions & Answers about Hvis jeg bliver træt, vil jeg slukke lyset og gå i seng.
Hvis means if and introduces a conditional subordinate clause.
So Hvis jeg bliver træt is the “condition” part: If I get tired …
The rest (vil jeg …) is the “main clause” that tells what will happen if the condition is met.
In Danish, it’s standard to put a comma between a subordinate clause and the main clause:
Hvis jeg bliver træt, vil jeg …
You’ll often see this even in relatively short sentences.
Because the sentence begins with something other than the subject (Hvis…), Danish uses V2 word order in the main clause: the finite verb comes in second position.
Main clause: vil (finite verb) + jeg (subject) + rest
So: …, vil jeg slukke lyset …
If the main clause stood alone, you’d normally say Jeg vil slukke lyset …
bliver is from blive = to become / to get.
So bliver træt means get tired (a change of state).
er træt means am tired (a state).
So:
- Hvis jeg bliver træt = If I get tired (at some point)
- Hvis jeg er træt = If I’m tired (already)
vil can express:
- future/intention: I will / I’m going to
- willingness/volition: I want to / I’m willing to (context decides)
In a conditional like this, vil jeg slukke… usually reads as I’ll (then) turn off… (intention/future plan).
After a modal verb like vil, Danish uses the infinitive without “to” (the bare infinitive):
- vil slukke = will turn off
- vil gå = will go
There’s no extra marker like English to.
Both exist, but they can feel slightly different:
- slukke lyset = turn off the light (direct object; very common)
- slukke for lyset = literally switch off for the light (also common, especially when talking about power/devices more generally)
In everyday Danish, slukke lyset is a straightforward, natural choice.
Literally it’s go in bed, but idiomatically it means go to bed.
It’s a fixed, very common expression: at gå i seng = to go to bed.
Because Danish doesn’t “carry over” the subject from the subordinate clause into the main clause. Each clause has its own grammar:
- subordinate clause subject: jeg
- main clause subject: jeg
So repeating jeg is required and natural.
Yes, but the meaning shifts:
- vil jeg slukke… = I will / I intend to / I’ll (then) …
- skal jeg slukke… = I must / I’m supposed to / I should … (obligation/plan often influenced by rules or expectations)
So vil sounds like your own decision; skal often implies necessity or a schedule.
A few common pronunciation points:
- Hvis: the v is often very soft; many learners mainly hear an s-ending.
- bliver: often sounds like [bliw-] / [bli-] with a reduced ending in fast speech.
- træt: the vowel is like an ö/uh sound; the t is fairly clear.
- vil jeg: in connected speech, jeg is often reduced (you may hear something like vil ya).
- slukke: double kk gives a clear k sound; final -e is usually a neutral schwa.
If you want, I can give an IPA-style pronunciation for the whole sentence in a common standard accent.