Prepositions are used to indicate the relationship between two entities, often one larger than the other, like ”the football ON the grass”, ”the keyhole IN the door”, ”the house BY the lake” and so on. Both English and Danish have a finite number of prepositions at their disposal, and both languages can use them to express the same meanings. The problem for the learner of Danish, is that meanings are GROUPED in very different ways, meaning that a single preposition from Danish can translate into more than a handful of different prepositions in English example sentences.
Take for instance the examples (1a-e) which show five different usages of the Danish preposition ’på’ and it’s translations in English. The most frequent translation of ’på’ is ”on” as in (1a), aka. Vertical support of an object, like ’koppen på bordet’ ”the cup on the table” or ’huset på bjerget’ ”the house on the mountain’.
(1a) Jeg er på vej
I’m on my way
But as shown in (1b-1e) there exist a great deal of other examples, where ’på’ has various other translations into English.
For instance ”at” as in (1b). There is a number of places, which usually take ’på’ as their preposition:
på arbejde at work
på café at a café
på restaurant at a restaurant
på bar at a bar
på politistationen at the police station
på rådhuset at city hall
(1b) Jeg er på arbejde
I’m at work
So this would seem to indicate, that ’på’ can also mean something like ”inside of a (specific) building”.
Another example is ”of” as in (1c).
(1c) Enden på historien
The end of the story
Other examples are:
Ørerne på koen the ears of the cow
Håndtaget på døren the handle of the car
Løsningen på problemet the solution to the problem
Konklusionen på undersøgelsen the conclusion of the investigation
Slutningen på samarbejdet the end of the collaboration
This seems to indicate some sort of atribute of an item or concept.
Similarly, in (1d)
(1d) Svaret på spørgsmålet
The answer to the question
(1e) Jeg er på badeværelset
I’m in the bathroom
Other examples are:
Jeg er på loftet I’m in the attic
Jeg er på lageret I’m in the storage room
Jeg er på værkstedet I’m in the workshop
So it can be used for being in certain parts of a house or building, but not in others, as shown below:
Jeg er i køkkenet I’m in the kitchen
Jeg er i stuen I’m in the living room
Jeg er i soveværelset I’m in the bedroom
So, the default preposition for being in various rooms of a house is ’i’ ”in”.
As this little demonstration illustrates, prepositions behave in unpredictable ways when translated into another language, even with two languages as closely related as Danish and English.
A list of Danish prepositions and their translations into English as they relate to their core meanings, i.e. their physical and most typical meanings.
ad by (trajectory of movement)
af of
efter after
foran in front of
fra from (source)
før before
gennem through
i in (containment)
med with
mellem between
over over
på on (vertical support)
til to (goal)
uden without
under under
ved by (close proximity)
