Danish/Verbs

The present tense in Danish verbs is expressed by adding an r to the end.

The basic form of a verb is the infinitive. In English these are words preceded by to, such as to go and to be. The Danish translation of to in this case is at. Danish infinitives usually end in e, and you get the present tense by adding -r. There are two major groups of Danish verbs. In one group, you add -de or -ede to the end of the infinitive to create the past tense and -et to the end to create the perfect tense. In the other group, you replace the e at the end of the infinitive with -te to get the past tense, and remove the e from the past tense to get the perfect.

You will experience a lot of examples where these rules don't apply, but they are the most general ones.

Note that several verbs in the table are irregular.

Note: Imperative is the tense where you give a command like "eat!", "read!", "listen!" etc.