Questions & Answers about Barnet viser sin tegning til læreren.
Why is it barnet and not barn?
Barn means child in an indefinite sense: a child.
Barnet means the child. In Danish, the definite article is usually added as an ending to the noun rather than written as a separate word.
- barn = a child
- barnet = the child
Because the sentence refers to the child, Danish uses -et here.
Why does barnet end in -et, but læreren ends in -en?
Danish nouns have grammatical gender, and the definite ending depends on the gender.
- et barn → barnet
- en lærer → læreren
So:
- -et is the usual definite ending for neuter nouns
- -en is the usual definite ending for common gender nouns
That is why you get:
- barnet = the child
- læreren = the teacher
Why is it viser?