"He eats the apple."

Translation: Han spiser æblet.

[TP602]

Han spise et aeblet?

[HerrLoewe]

Ooh! I can answer this one! Danish uses suffixes for "the" rather than a separate word. et æble = an apple, but æblet = the apple. So when you say "et æblet", you're saying "a the apple," which makes no sense. As for spise, that's just an incorrect conjugation. All verbs take -r in the present tense, so it's "spiser".

[pakkun96]

Thank you so much ! :)

[JonWaschenReyes]

thanks a lot that explains so much

[frenchicanadian]

You mean all verbs instead of pronouns?

[HerrLoewe]

Yup! Strange typo on my part. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. It's fixed now.

[LuadB0]

Thank you!

[KristianSa10]

How do I type aeblet correctly

[Gringa.mama]

Kristian: right below the box you type the answer into, notice the 3 letters in circles? One is the ae letter, and you can just click on it to insert it into your text if you don't know the keyboard shortcut on your computer/or don't have a Dansk keyboard.

[leanderdking]

æblet

[ArthurVasc2]

Get the Danish keyboard on your phone æ

[fredc2002]

Hold the a down and it should come up with æ

[dddanilo]

Is æblet pronounced like /e:blə/? If yes, why not /ɛ:blə/? Because I thought æ is like the a in the English word cat...

[zacball]

Why don't you say de æblet?

[Xneb]

The same reason you don't say "they the apple" in English. "De" can only translate to "the" when there is an adjective between the noun and definite article in English and the noun is plural. So:

Han spiser æblet. = He eats the apple.
Han spiser det røde æble. = He eats the red apple.
Han spiser guleroden. = He eats the carrot.
Han spiser den lilla gulerod. = He is eating the purple carrot.
Han spiser æblerne. = He is eating the apples.
Han spiser de røde æbler. = He is eating the red apples.
Han spiser gulerødderne = He is eating the carrots.
Han spiser de lilla gulerødder. = He is eating the purple carrots.

(I mentioned carrot(s) to show that "de" is used with both grammatical genders)

[taprenabo]

Why is it den lilla gulerod but de lilla gulerødder

[belladt]

Den is singular while de is plural :)

[taprenabo]

so the last sentence should be "He is eating the purple carrots?"

[Xneb]

Yes, it seems I made a typo. I will correct it now.

[Ryaan278091]

I spelled it without the t.