# Danish: Hva sier du?



## jun

I heard that this Danish sentence 'Hva sier du', means 'what did you say' in English. I guess 'hva' is 'what', and 'sier' is 'say'. Of course I know that 'du' is 'you'. I wonder if there's not the Danish word for 'did'?


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## Hakro

It's not needed, as far as I know, in any language but English.


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## jun

Thanks, *Hakro*!


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## Lemminkäinen

Does it really mean 'what did you say?' and not 'what are you saying?' though? I'm not very familiar with the intricacies of the Danish verbal system, so the present form may very well be used like this for all I know (it actually sounds better Danish to me than 'hva sa du?', but I'm not completely sure).


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## Hakro

I guess you're right, Lemminkäinen. To say = _sige_ in Danish. But the main point was that the verb _do_ is not used for interrogatives in Danish.


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## jun

Thank you guys for the reply!

And could any of you tell me how to pronounce the verb, "sige"?
Is it 'sai'?


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## Hakro

I suppose it's pronounced something like "seegue" but wait for a native Danish speaker to confirm.

By the way, as Lemminkäinen said, "hva sier du" = what do you say, what are you saying; "hva sagde du" = what did you say.


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## jun

Thanks for the correction, Hakro! 

And could you also tell me why the present form of the word 'sige' is 'sier'? At first I thought it should be 'siger'. Is it because 'sige' is an irregular verb?


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## Lemminkäinen

jun,

according to Verbix, the present form of *å sige* is *siger*, not *sier* (a google search on Danish web sites concur).
So it's regularly conjugated in the present tense, but irregular in the past (*sagde*).


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## jun

Oh, thanks *Lemmin*!


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## Hakro

Right, Lemminkäinen, *siger* is the correct form but I found also more than  30,000 Danish pages  where they use the form *sier*. It's possibly colloquial. I think we need a native Dane to resolve this.


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## Lemminkäinen

Hakro said:


> Right, Lemminkäinen, *siger* is the correct form but I found also more than  30,000 Danish pages  where they use the form *sier*. It's possibly colloquial. I think we need a native Dane to resolve this.



Perhaps, yes. But there's a possibility of it just being a typo. Also, I found that a lot of the hits I got with 'sier' were actually Norwegian texts on Danish web sites. I don't know how many of the hits these options represent though, so I agree that a native's opinion would be appreciated.


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## Hakro

Lemminkäinen said:


> Also, I found that a lot of the hits I got with 'sier' were actually Norwegian texts on Danish web sites. I don't know how many of the hits these options represent though, so I agree that a native's opinion would be appreciated.


That's what I was suspecting, too. So, let's wait for the Danes.


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## destrukktor

"sier" is NOT a danish word.  Well, not a danish word for "saying," anyways.  "Hva sier du" looks very norwegian.  Proper Danish is "Hvad siger du."  As has been said, that directly translates to "What are you saying?"  But is very commonly used where we would say "What did you say" in english.

(Not a Dane, but living in Denmark)


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## bjervell

destrukktor said:


> "sier" is NOT a danish word.  Well, not a danish word for "saying," anyways.  "Hva sier du" looks very norwegian.  Proper Danish is "Hvad siger du."  As has been said, that directly translates to "What are you saying?"  But is very commonly used where we would say "What did you say" in english.
> 
> (Not a Dane, but living in Denmark)



'Hva sier du' is indeed very norwegian  And it translates to 'what do you say'. 'What did you say' is 'hva sa du' in norwegian.


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## duckie

jun said:


> And could any of you tell me how to pronounce the verb, "sige"?
> Is it 'sai'?



It's difficult to describe phonetics without a common referenced, but it's not too far from this: SEE-uh

As has been mentioned, the correct spelling would be 'hvad siger du', and it does indeed mean 'what are you saying' (siger is simple present tense - 'what say you').


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## AtropoZ

Hi there. 
"Hva sier du".
It's how we've come to pronounce "hvad siger du" here in Denmark.
like in many other countries, our language is deteriorating. We skip letters in pronounciating, and it's worst in the sms/chat "language".
Mostly it's the endings of words that gets skipped, but sometimes also the middle of words are pulled together, or left out entirely.
I'd have to agree with Duckie on the pronounciation. It's the closest I can get to it as well.

So you won't find sier in the vocab, but it is in our spoken language. Hakro is right about the colloquial part 

Jun: no danish word for "did". We show the "did" by altering/or adding to the verb. 
hvad siger du= what are you saying. 
hvad sagde du=what did you say.

Hvad ser du på=what are you watching.
Hvad så du på=what were you watching.


Regards.
I'm a native dane


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## duckie

I'm not sure if 'siger' has ever been pronounced with anything but a silent g? Danish is a bit notorious among the Scandinavian languages in that the spelling is often quite removed from the pronounciation. Norwegian, on the other hand, is almost written to the letter the way it's pronounced..


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## Vejrudsigt

Yes, destrukktor explained it best (unsurprisingly, since Canuck + Denmark = WIN, and vice versa).

Just for completion's sake, I think that the Swedes would go, "Vad säger du?" (Har jag rätt?)


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## Lilla My

duckie said:


> Norwegian, on the other hand, is almost written to the letter the way it's pronounced..



Well, I didn't know that.  I always thought that you don't pronounce a lot of letters you actually write in Norwegian (like the final d, t, and so on).

(I know that, being french, I shouldn't say anything about pronounciation  )


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## duckie

Hmm.. I'm not Norwegian, so I could be wrong, but it's my experience that it's almost a phonetically written language. In fact, many Norwegian words are written the way they would be pronounced in Danish as well, simplified to exclude most oddities that Danish has kept in its writing.


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## Lemminkäinen

Lilla My said:


> Well, I didn't know that.  I always thought that you don't pronounce a lot of letters you actually write in Norwegian (like the final d, t, and so on).



Not many words have mute final consonants, though I think the ones that deviate from the norm tend to be common words.
_Det_ for instance is pronounced without the 't'. But _råd_ is pronounced as it's written.



duckie said:


> Hmm.. I'm not Norwegian, so I could be wrong, but it's my experience that it's _almost a phonetically written language_.



I think calling it phonetic is toeing the line  There are rules of pronounciation, but quite a lot of exceptions. 
It seems to me that especially the vowels 'o', 'u', 'ø' and 'å' are mixed in some instances. E.g. _dum_ which is pronounced 'dom', while an 'o' in a short syllable quite often is pronounced as 'å'.  



> In fact, many Norwegian words are written the way they would be pronounced in Danish as well, simplified to exclude most oddities that Danish has kept in its writing.



Because Danish was the writing systems in four hundred years up to 1814. After that, it essentially evolved to be as true to _den dannede dagligtale_  (did you know that the word 'dannet' came from the expression _å snakke danet_, ie. to talk Danish? Quite a compliment, eh?  )


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## duckie

True, it's not completely phonetic of course, but compared to Danish it's much closer  New words and foreign words that are introduced often seem to have their spelling adjusted to Norwegian pronounciation, whereas the spelling is rarely changed for words imported to the Danish language. If I remember correctly Norway has an official institute that decides spelling of imported words, in an attempt to harmonize them into the language? I believe that France and Iceland have such official bodies at least..


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## Lemminkäinen

duckie said:


> New words and foreign words that are introduced often seem to have their spelling adjusted to Norwegian pronounciation, whereas the spelling is rarely changed for words imported to the Danish language.



Not so much new words, but a lot of foreign words have been adjusted in spelling, true:

Chauffeur -> sjåfør
Jaloux -> sjalu
Bureau -> byrå
Chocolade -> sjokolade
Tape - teip
Flirt - flørt
Boutique -> butikk
Champagne -> sjampanje
Cognac -> konjakk

But...



> If I remember correctly Norway has an official institute that decides spelling of imported words, in an attempt to harmonize them into the language? I believe that France and Iceland have such official bodies at least..



...boy oh boy, you should've seen the ruckus when _Språkrådet_ (the Language Council) attempted to accept some new forms in 2004 
Previously, _pøbb_ for 'pub' had been mocked, but when they suggested (amongst others) to write 'bacon' as _beiken_, all hell broke loose.
The news papers printed angry op-eds and commentaries the rest of that spring 

(By te way, we are getting quite off-topic now. Perhaps a friendly mod could split this thread?)


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