Kan De sige mig, om åbningstiden er den samme i morgen, eller om butikken lukker tidligere?

De means you, but it is the formal way of saying you in Danish.

A native English speaker might expect just one word for you, but Danish distinguishes between:

• du = informal you
• De = formal/polite you

The capital D helps show that it is the polite pronoun, not the ordinary plural pronoun de (they).

In modern spoken Danish, du is much more common, and De can sound very formal, old-fashioned, or especially polite, depending on the situation.

Yes. Kan De sige mig ... ? is a polite and natural way to say Can you tell me ... ?

Breakdown:

• Kan = can
• De = you (formal)
• sige mig = tell me

So the structure is very close to English.

You may also hear:

• Kan du sige mig ... ? = informal version
• Kan De fortælle mig ... ? = a slightly more explicit Can you tell me ... ?

Using sige mig in this kind of sentence is completely normal.

In Danish, sige nogen noget often works like tell someone something in English.

So:

• sige mig = tell me
• sige ham = tell him
• sige os = tell us

You do not normally need til here.

Compare:

• Kan De sige mig ... ? = Can you tell me ... ?

This is similar to English, where we say tell me, not tell to me.

Here, om means whether or sometimes if.

In this sentence, it introduces an indirect yes/no question:

• om åbningstiden er den samme i morgen
  = whether the opening hours are the same tomorrow

So after Kan De sige mig, Danish uses om to introduce the thing you want to know.

This is very common:

• Jeg ved ikke, om han kommer. = I don’t know whether he is coming.
• Kan du sige mig, om det er rigtigt? = Can you tell me whether it is correct?

Because Danish often repeats om when two alternative indirect questions are linked with eller.

So:

• om åbningstiden er den samme i morgen
• eller om butikken lukker tidligere

This is like saying:

• whether the opening hours are the same tomorrow, or whether the shop closes earlier

In English, we sometimes omit the second whether, but in Danish repeating om sounds clear and natural.

This is a very common thing for English speakers to notice.

Danish often uses åbningstiden literally as the opening time in contexts where English prefers opening hours.

So although English commonly says Are the opening hours the same tomorrow?, Danish can say:

• er åbningstiden den samme i morgen?

This does not necessarily mean just one exact time point. It can refer to the store’s opening-time arrangement/hours in a general sense.

Depending on context, Danish can also use plural expressions, but åbningstiden is very normal.

Because Danish usually says den samme / det samme / de samme for the same.

Here, åbningstiden is a common-gender singular noun, so the matching form is:

• den samme

Compare:

• bogen er den samme = the book is the same
• huset er det samme = the house is the same
• reglerne er de samme = the rules are the same

So den agrees with the noun’s gender and number.

Because after om, you are in a subordinate clause, and Danish word order changes.

In a main question, Danish often has inversion:

• Er åbningstiden den samme i morgen?
  = Are the opening hours the same tomorrow?

But in an indirect question introduced by om, Danish uses normal subordinate-clause order:

• om åbningstiden er den samme i morgen
  = whether the opening hours are the same tomorrow

So this is an important contrast:

• Er butikken åben? = Is the shop open?
• Jeg ved ikke, om butikken er åben. = I don’t know whether the shop is open.

Because in Danish, i morgen is normally written as two words and means tomorrow.

This is simply the standard spelling:

• i dag = today
• i morgen = tomorrow

English speakers often want to treat it like one word because English uses tomorrow, but Danish does not.

Butikken means the shop/store.

The ending -en is the definite article attached to the noun:

• en butik = a shop
• butikken = the shop

Danish often puts the definite article at the end of the noun instead of using a separate word like English the.

So in this sentence, it refers to a specific store that both speaker and listener know about.

Tidligere means earlier.

It is the comparative form related to tidlig (early), so:

• tidlig = early
• tidligere = earlier

In the sentence:

• butikken lukker tidligere
  = the shop closes earlier

The comparison is understood from context: earlier than usual, earlier than today, or earlier than the normal opening hours suggest.

Yes, and in modern Danish that is often the more normal choice.

The sentence would become:

Kan du sige mig, om åbningstiden er den samme i morgen, eller om butikken lukker tidligere?

That means the same thing, but in an informal/normal modern register.

So the main difference is:

• De = formal/polite
• du = informal/standard everyday usage

This is similar to English Can you tell me ... ?

Grammatically, Kan De ... ? uses can, but in real usage it often functions as a polite request rather than a question about ability.

So the sentence is understood as:

• Could you please tell me ... ?
• Would you tell me ... ?

This is a very common way to be polite in Danish, just as in English.

Yes, it sounds fairly formal, mainly because of De.

Other parts of the sentence are neutral and standard, but De makes the whole question sound especially polite and somewhat formal.

If you changed only that one word to du, the sentence would sound much more everyday:

• Kan du sige mig, om åbningstiden er den samme i morgen, eller om butikken lukker tidligere?

So for most modern everyday situations, du would be more common, while De is useful to recognize because you may still see or hear it in customer service, formal contexts, or older material.