Danish has two main locative adverbs her ‘here’ and der ‘there’, examples are shown in (1).
1)
Hvor er mine briller? De ligger der!
‘where are my glasses? They’re there!’
Skal du rejse i ferien? Nej, jeg bliver her i Danmark.
‘are you travelling for this vacation? No, I’m staying here in Denmark.’
These combine with adverbs of direction such as ud ‘out’, ind ‘in’, op ‘up’, ned ‘down’ and many more (see a list of these at the bottom of this post). Examples of such combinations are shown in (2).
2)
a. Hvornår kommer Peter ud i køkkenet og hjælper?
‘when is Peter coming (out) into the kitchen to help?’
Han kommer herud lige om lidt
‘he’s coming out here in just a moment’
b. Kører I op i sommerhuset i weekenden?
‘are you driving up to the summer house for the weekend?’
Ja, vi kører derop allerede fredag morgen
‘yes, we’re driving up there on Friday morning already’
Examples (2a-b) combine locative adverbs her/der, which relate to the perspective of the speaker, and directional adverbs ud and op, which relate to the geography or landscape, large and small. So for instance in (2a) the movement into the kitchen is perceived of as ‘out’ because it orients away from the living room, the main room of the house, and likewise in (2b) the movement to the summerhouse is perceived of as moving ‘up’, either because the summer house is to the North or because it is up in the hills or mountains.
In terms or pronunciation, there is an important difference between her/der in isolation as in (1) and when in a combination as in (2). This contrast is shown in (3).
(3)
a. Er hun her? ‘is she here?’
Kommer hun herop? ‘is she coming up here?’
b. Er hun der? ‘is she there?’
Kommer hun derop? ‘is she coming up there?’
One might now think based on (3) that it is the combination of the two types of adverbs that changes the pronunciation of her and der, but that is not the case. Rather, it is the lack of stress, that changes the pronunciation, just as with so many other small words in Danish which can be stressed optionally, like pronouns and prepositions. To illustrate, consider the contrast in (4).
(4)
a. Kommer du herhen og ser film med mig?
‘are you coming over here to watch a movie with me?’
b. Nej, du kan komme her hen.
‘no, you can come over here‘
In (4b) the underlined words are stressed for contrast both between the subject pronoun du and the locative adverb her, because the speaker wants to show disagreement and because her is now stressed, the pronunciation changes.
These facts are related to a broader phenomenon in Danish regarding information structure which affects stress and word order – more on this later.
Directional adverbs – short and long forms
Below is a list of directional adverbs with both short and long forms. This difference has not been touched upon here, but all directional adverbs have a short form, used with verbs of movement, and a long form, used with non-movement verbs.
- Ud / ude ‘out’
- Ind / inde ‘in’
- Op / oppe ‘up’
- Ned / nede ‘down’
- Hjem / hjemme ‘home’
- Om / omme ’round back’
- Hen / henne ‘HORIZONTAL’
- Over / ovre ‘over’
- Frem / fremme ‘forward / AT DESTINATION’
