Grammar
Har or er? The Danish perfect tense
Published 3 October 2026
English builds the perfect with "have" every time: I have eaten, I have left. Danish uses har "have" for most verbs, jeg har spist "I have eaten", but switches to er "am" when something has moved or changed, hun er rejst "she has left". One question tells you which to use, and by the end of this page you will be asking it without thinking.
The default
Har, unless something has moved or changed
The perfect is har or er plus the verb's perfect form, as in har spist or er rejst. The perfect forms themselves are in the Perfect column of the list of common Danish verbs, and the irregular ones are explained in the Danish irregular verbs you will actually meet.
For choosing the helper verb, start with har. It covers the large majority of verbs, including the ones that feel as if they should be different: jeg har vĂŠret "I have been", jeg har haft "I have had".
Switch to er for verbs that move someone to a new place or put them in a new state, when the result is what matters:
- Toget er kommet. "The train has come", so it is here now.
- De er flyttet til Aarhus. "They have moved to Aarhus", so they live there now.
- Han er blevet syg. "He has become ill", so he is ill now.
The common er verbs are komme [ËkÊ°ÊmÉ] "come", gĂ„ "go, leave", rejse "travel, leave", flytte "move house", falde "fall", dĂž "die" and blive [bliËÉ] "become".
The question to ask
Is someone now somewhere else, or something else?
The same verb can take either helper, and the choice changes the meaning. Compare:
| With er: the result | With har: the activity |
|---|---|
| jeg er gÄet "I have left" (I am gone) | jeg har gÄet en tur "I have been for a walk" |
| Hun er rejst. "She has left" (she is away) | Hun har rejst meget. "She has travelled a lot" |
| Vi er flyttet. "We have moved" (to a new home) | Vi har flyttet sofaen. "We have moved the sofa" |
That last pair shows a useful extra rule: if the verb has an object, something it is done to like sofaen, it takes har. Moving the sofa does not put you anywhere new.
So the test is one question. After the action, is the subject in a new place or a new state? Then er. Otherwise, har.
Two traps
English speakers overuse har, German speakers overuse er
If your first language is English, "have" is the only helper you know, so jeg har kommet will feel natural. It is wrong: jeg er kommet. Every time you reach for har with a verb of arriving or leaving, stop for a second.
If you speak German, the trap is the other way round. German says ich bin gewesen, so Danish jeg er vĂŠret sounds right. Danish uses har with vĂŠre [ËvÉËÊÉ]: jeg har vĂŠret. German also uses sein for running as an activity (ich bin gelaufen), where Danish says jeg har lĂžbet.
The same choice carries into the past perfect, with havde and var: Hun var rejst, da jeg kom "She had left when I arrived".
Try it
Five gaps, thirty seconds
- Toget ___ kommet.
- Vi ___ spist.
- De ___ flyttet til Odense.
- Jeg ___ vĂŠret i Berlin.
- Han ___ flyttet bordet.
Answers: er (the train is here now), har (an activity), er (they live somewhere new), har (vĂŠre always takes har), and har (it has an object, bordet "the table").
Five out of five means you can stop worrying about this one. The perfect forms themselves still need learning, verb by verb, and the regular ones follow from the past: see the Danish past tense. Learn verbs with their perfect forms
Learn the verbs you will use first
Every verb in the app comes with its present, past and perfect, in the order Danish uses them.