Danish: A Comprehensive Grammar

by Philip Holmes, Tom Lundskaer-Nielsen, Robin Allan

Book Overview

A complete reference guide to modern Danish, concentrating on the real patterns in use today. This Grammar will be the standard reference for years to come for the learner and user of Danish,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0415082064
• ISBN13: 9780415082068
• Release Date: March 1995
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 640 Pages
• Weight: 2.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.8" x 6.1" x 9.2"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary

Customer Reviews

Danish a comprehensive grammar

Excellent comprehensive book , all you want and need to knwo about the language.

An Exhaustive, Encyclopedic, Grammar Reference.

It would be difficult to imagine a more complete work on descriptive, Danish grammar, or any grammar, for that matter. You name it, it's covered here: orthography, sentence structure, verbs, adjectives, the list is very long(in fact, the very well organized index is 23 pages). Some readers have expressed the opinion that this book is very "British" but it is not. It is just very precise. For example, the terms copulatives(copulative conjuntions) and disjunctives(disjunctive conjunctions) are terms expressing the types of conjunctions used to join items and those used to separate them(as in the English "and" and "or"). Many readers might not be accustomed to such terminology, but the book actually does not assume that the reader is. It explains these terms and often makes comparisons to English. This is not a book that a beginner should use to learn Danish all by itself. There are no reading lessons , for example, nor is it organized for tutorial presentation. It is a reference, but one that is very usable by students and speakers of all levels. There is also a similar volume in this series on Swedish grammar. The binding is also quite nice. It is sewn in signature.

Explaining Danish grammar when the Danes can't

I moved to DK several years ago. I had a few months of formal instruction, but still find it difficult to get answers to the "why" questions surrounding Danish grammar. Most Danes I have met cannot explain their own language's grammar rules, and also admit to not knowing or using proper grammar as well as they should. This book has definitely aided my language skills and provdes a handy reference as well, especially with professional correspondence. Highly recommended as a supplement to Danish instruction.

the joy of Danish grammar...

This is an excellent (and probably only) English-language guide to thorough Danish grammar. Very refined grammatical points are exemplified and explained in terms that even a non-linguist can understand. This thick book is neatly organized, the material is logically presented, and is hip with contemporary language and usage.

Incredibly important book for serious students of Danish

If you want to understand the language of Danish -- and Danes are sticklers for grammar, both Danish and English -- then you must have this book or a Danish nun as a teacher. The cross-cultural equivalent of Warriner's English; everything but sentence diagramming. Not quite Strunk & White's Elements of Style, but I need its 600-plus pages. The terminology is "rather" British (see "copulative conjunctions"), yet it even instructs how to properly form colloquial sentences -- "so" colloquial that a Danish friend to whom I had written thought I must have made a mistake because the sentence structure I had used, as a beginner, seemed to arcanely correct. In short, this book is outwardly dull but extremely useful.