Jeg ser efter min nøgle i tasken.

I

Breakdown of Jeg ser efter min nøgle i tasken.

• i: in
• min: my
• tasken: the bag

Questions & Answers about Jeg ser efter min nøgle i tasken.

Why is it Jeg ser when English would usually say I am looking?

Danish often uses the simple present where English uses the present continuous.

So Jeg ser efter min nøgle can mean I am looking for my key right now, even though there is no separate am + -ing form.

This is very common in Danish:

• Jeg spiser = I am eating
• Jeg læser = I am reading

If you really want to emphasize that something is in progress, Danish can do that in other ways, but in a normal sentence like this, the simple present is completely natural.

What does ser efter mean here? Doesn’t se mean see/look and efter mean after?

Yes, taken separately:

• se = see / look
• efter = after

But together, at se efter is a set expression. In this sentence it means something like:

• look for
• check for
• see whether something is there

So you should not translate it word for word as see after. The meaning comes from the whole expression, not just the individual words.

Is se efter a fixed expression, or can I think of efter as just an ordinary preposition here?