Min bror siger, at hans natbord ikke er lige så pænt som mit.

Because bror is a common-gender noun in Danish, and the possessive must match that noun’s gender.

• min = my, used with common-gender nouns
• mit = my, used with neuter nouns
• mine = my, used with plural nouns

So:

• min bror = my brother
• mit natbord = my bedside table
• mine bøger = my books

This is a very common question. Danish uses sin/sit/sine only when the possessor is the subject of the same clause.

Here, the full sentence is:

Min bror siger, at hans natbord ikke er lige så pænt som mit.

Inside the subordinate clause after at, the subject is hans natbord. That means hans is not referring back to the subject of that same clause in the way sin would.

In practice, Danish often uses hans here to mean his. If you used sit, the structure and meaning relationship would be different and could sound odd here.

So for a learner, the safest understanding is:

• hans = his
• sin/sit/sine = his/her/its own, referring back to the subject of the same clause

At means that and introduces a subordinate clause.

So:

• Min bror siger = My brother says
• at hans natbord ikke er lige så pænt som mit = that his bedside table is not as nice as mine

In English, that is often optional:

• My brother says that his bedside table...
• My brother says his bedside table...

In Danish, at is very commonly included in this kind of sentence.

Because this is a subordinate clause introduced by at.

Main clauses and subordinate clauses often have different word order in Danish.

Compare:

• Main clause: Hans natbord er ikke pænt.
• Subordinate clause: ... at hans natbord ikke er pænt.

In subordinate clauses, words like ikke usually come before the finite verb.

That is why you get:

• at hans natbord ikke er...

not

• at hans natbord er ikke...

Lige så ... som means just as ... as or simply as ... as.

In this sentence:

• ikke lige så pænt som mit = not as nice as mine

This is the standard Danish pattern for comparisons of equality:

• lige så stor som = as big as
• lige så dyr som = as expensive as
• lige så pænt som = as nice as

With ikke, it becomes:

• ikke lige så pænt som = not as nice as

Because natbord is a neuter noun: et natbord.

When an adjective comes after er and describes a singular neuter noun, it usually takes -t:

• en stol er pæn = a chair is nice
• et natbord er pænt = a bedside table is nice

So here:

• natbord is neuter
• therefore the adjective is pænt

Because Danish, like English, can leave out the repeated noun when it is understood from context.

So:

• ... som mit natbord = ... as mine / as my bedside table
• ... som mit = ... as mine

The noun natbord is omitted because it is already clear.

This works because mit stands for mit natbord.

You usually learn the gender together with the noun:

• et natbord = a bedside table

Since it takes et, it is neuter. That affects other words around it:

• mit natbord = my bedside table
• et pænt natbord = a nice bedside table
• natbordet = the bedside table

Learning nouns with their article is very important in Danish.

In this sentence, som mit is part of the comparison structure lige så ... som, so it means as mine.

The whole comparison is:

• ikke lige så pænt som mit
• not as nice as mine

Even though som can often mean as or like, here it is specifically part of the as ... as pattern.

Yes. Siger is the present tense of at sige = to say.

So:

• jeg siger = I say / I am saying
• han siger = he says / he is saying

In Danish, the present tense often covers both the simple present and the present continuous, depending on context.

If you turn the subordinate clause into a main clause, the word order changes:

• Subordinate clause: at hans natbord ikke er lige så pænt som mit
• Main clause: Hans natbord er ikke lige så pænt som mit

The key difference is the position of ikke:

• Main clause: er ikke
• Subordinate clause: ikke er

It breaks down like this:

• Min bror = subject
• siger = verb
• at ... = subordinate clause introduced by that
• hans natbord = subject inside the subordinate clause
• ikke er = is not
• lige så pænt som mit = as nice as mine

So the pattern is:

[Main clause] + at + [subordinate clause]

More literally:

My brother says that his bedside table is not as nice as mine.

A rough guide is pen(t), but the real Danish pronunciation is softer and more compressed than English spelling suggests.

A few points:

• æ sounds somewhat like the vowel in bed, but not exactly
• nt at the end may sound lighter than an English speaker expects
• Danish pronunciation is often less fully pronounced than spelling suggests

If you are learning pronunciation, it helps to listen to native audio for:

• pæn
• pænt
• natbord
• bror

because Danish vowels and soft consonants are hard to guess from spelling alone.