You’ve probably run into the biggest headache for beginners of Danish: en and et.

In English, we have “a” and “an”. We choose between them based on how the next word sounds (e.g., a house, an apple).

In Danish, it’s not about sound. It’s about gender.

You have probably asked yourself: Why is it “en banan” (a banana) but “et æble” (an apple)?

Don’t worry. Even Danes sometimes disagree on the gender of new words!

While there aren’t perfect rules that work 100% of the time, there are patterns and tricks that will make your life much easier.

What are en and et?

In Danish, every noun (a person, place, or thing) has a grammatical gender. There are two genders:

1. Common gender (Fælleskøn) -> Uses en
2. Neuter gender (Intetkøn) -> Uses et

When you learn a new noun in Danish, you aren’t just learning the word. You have to learn its “gender tag” along with it.

Think of it like this: the word for “car” isn’t just bil. It is en bil.

When to use en (common gender)

Here is the best news you will hear today: About 75% of all Danish nouns are en words.

If you are on a game show and you have to guess the gender of a Danish word to win a million dollars, always guess en. You will be right three out of four times.

While there are exceptions, en words usually include:

• Living things: Most people, animals, and plants are common gender.
• Jobs and titles: Words describing what people do.

Here are some examples of standard en words:

There are exceptions to the “living things” rule (for example, et menneske means “a human” and et dyr means “an animal”), but usually, living things take en.

When to use et (neuter gender)

The remaining 25% of nouns use et.

These are much harder to categorize. They are often inanimate objects (non-living things), geographical areas, or substances, but to be honest, it can feel very random.

Here are some common words that you just have to memorize as et words:

The definite article: saying “the”

Understanding en vs et is crucial because it changes how you say “the”.

In English, “the” is a separate word that goes before the noun (e.g., The car).

In Danish, “the” is a suffix that gets attached to the end of the noun.

• If the word is an en word, you add -en to the end.
• If the word is an et word, you add -et to the end.

(Note: If the word already ends in ‘e’, you just add ‘n’ or ‘t’).

Here is a table to show you how this works:

Here is how you might use them in a sentence:

Compound words and regional dialects

Danish loves to mash words together to make long compound words. This actually makes finding the gender very easy.

The rule: The gender of the compound word is determined by the last word in the chain.

Let’s look at the word for “summer house” (sommerhus).

1. Sommer is an en word (en sommer).
2. Hus is an et word (et hus).

Because hus is the last part of the word, the whole word becomes neuter: et sommerhus.

A note on dialects

I mentioned earlier that standard Danish (Rigsdansk) has two genders.

However, if you travel to parts of West Jutland (Jylland), you might hear people using en for almost everything. In other parts of Southern Jutland, they might put the article in front of the word like in English or German (e.g., æ hus).

But for learning purposes, stick to the standard distinct en and et.

---

Don’t let the fear of using the wrong gender stop you from speaking.

If you say en hus instead of et hus, every Dane will still understand exactly what you mean. It might sound slightly funny to them, but communication is the goal!

Key Takeaways:

• En is Common Gender (~75% of words).
• Et is Neuter Gender (~25% of words).
• When in doubt, guess en.
• To say “the”, add -en or -et to the end of the word.