Learn Hardcore Swedish: Hälften av gruppen vill gå hem, men den andra hälften vill fortsätta. - Half of the group wants to go home, but the other half wants to continue.

Hälften av gruppen
- hälften = the half (a noun, definite form of en hälft)
- av = of
- gruppen = the group
- Literally: the half of the group.
- Feels neutral and slightly more formal or careful.
Halva gruppen
- halva = weak form of the adjective halv (half), used before a definite noun.
- Literally: the group, half (of it) → half the group.
- Very common and a bit more colloquial/compact.

In most everyday contexts they are interchangeable:

Hälften av gruppen vill gå hem.
Halva gruppen vill gå hem.

Both are natural Swedish.

Why is it den andra hälften and not something like den andra halvan?

Both den andra hälften and den andra halvan can be grammatically correct, but they feel slightly different.

Den andra hälften
- Uses the noun hälft (“half” in a more abstract/partitive sense).
- Very natural when you are splitting an abstract group (people, participants, etc.) into two halves.
- Literally: the other half (of the group).
Den andra halvan
- Uses the noun halva.
- Often used for more concrete, physical halves:
  - den andra halvan av mackan – the other half of the sandwich
  - andra halvan av matchen – the second half of the match
- It can be used for groups too, but hälften is the most idiomatic choice in this specific sentence.

So in your sentence, den andra hälften is the most typical way to refer back to the other half of the group as an abstract part of a whole.

Do I always need av after hälften, or can I say something like hälften gruppen?

You need av when you specify what the half is taken from.

Correct:

hälften av gruppen – half of the group
hälften av pengarna – half of the money
hälften av huset – half of the house

You cannot say:

✗ hälften gruppen
✗ hälften pengarna

You can use hälften alone if the reference is clear from context:

Hälften vill gå hem, hälften vill stanna.
Half want to go home, half want to stay.

But when you name the thing, you use av.

Is hälften grammatically singular or plural, and why is the pronoun den used?

Hälften is grammatically singular and has common gender (en hälft → hälften), so:

Pronoun: den (not det, not de)
Hence: den andra hälften = the other half.

However, semantically you are talking about many people (half of a group), so Swedish sometimes behaves as if it were plural in meaning:

Hälften av eleverna är trötta.
Literally “The half of the students are tired”, but the adjective trötta is plural, agreeing with the students rather than the word hälften.

In your sentence, you are contrasting two halves as units:

Hälften av gruppen … men den andra hälften …

Here it is natural to treat each half as a singular entity and refer to it with den.

Why is there a comma before men in …, men den andra hälften vill fortsätta?

In Swedish, you normally put a comma before men when it connects two independent main clauses (each with its own subject and verb):

Hälften av gruppen vill gå hem
den andra hälften vill fortsätta

Since both 1 and 2 are full clauses, a comma before men is standard:

Hälften av gruppen vill gå hem, men den andra hälften vill fortsätta.

If men just connects two words or shorter phrases, you do not use a comma:

Det är roligt men svårt. – It’s fun but hard.

Why is it vill gå hem and not vill att gå hem, like English “want to go home”?

In Swedish, when the same subject wants to do something, you use:

vilja + infinitive (without att)

Examples:

Jag vill gå hem. – I want to go home.
Hon vill läsa boken. – She wants to read the book.

You use vill att only when it introduces a subordinate clause with a different subject:

Jag vill att du går hem. – I want you to go home.
Vi vill att han ska stanna. – We want him to stay.

So in your sentence, the same “half of the group” is both wanting and going, so it must be:

Hälften av gruppen vill gå hem, not ✗ vill att gå hem.

Does gå hem always mean “walk home”, or can it also mean “go home” in general?

Literally, gå hem is go home on foot, and that is usually how it is interpreted:

Vi går hem. – typically: We’re walking home.

If you specifically go by some form of transport, Swedes usually say åka hem:

Vi åker hem med bussen. – We’re going home by bus.

That said, context sometimes makes the exact way of moving less important, and gå hem can be used more loosely, especially when the focus is just on leaving and going home, not on how:

After a long party: Nu går vi hem. – Often understood as “Let’s head home now.”

In your sentence, vill gå hem strongly suggests they want to leave and go home (often on foot), but the main contrast is with the others who want to fortsätta.

How is fortsätta used here? Do you need to say fortsätta med something?

Fortsätta means to continue, and it can be:

Intransitive (no object) – just continue (what we’re doing):
- Vill du fortsätta? – Do you want to continue?
- …men den andra hälften vill fortsätta. – …but the other half wants to continue (what they are doing).
With an explicit object or activity:
- De vill fortsätta festen. – They want to continue the party.
- Hon vill fortsätta arbetet. – She wants to continue the work.
With med to stress “continue with (an activity)”:
- De vill fortsätta med spelet. – They want to continue with the game.
- Ska vi fortsätta med lektionen? – Shall we continue with the lesson?

In your sentence, vill fortsätta is perfectly natural by itself; the missing part (with the activity they’re doing) is understood from context.

Could you say the same thing in another natural way in Swedish?

Yes, several variants are possible. A few common ones:

Hälften av gruppen vill gå hem, medan den andra hälften vill fortsätta.
(medan = while/whereas; a bit more formal.)
Halva gruppen vill gå hem, men resten vill fortsätta.
Half the group wants to go home, but the rest want to continue.
En del av gruppen vill gå hem, men de andra vill fortsätta.
Some of the group want to go home, but the others want to continue.

All of these are idiomatic; the original sentence is probably the most precise if you really mean “exactly half” and “the other half”.

Why is andra used here, and does andra change with gender or number?

Andra means both second and other in Swedish, and in practice it is invariant in form:

den andra hälften – the other half (common gender singular)
det andra rummet – the other / second room (neuter singular)
de andra barnen – the other children (plural)

So you do not get forms like andet or andret; the word stays andra, and only the article/pronoun (den/det/de) changes:

den andra … (en-word, singular)
det andra … (ett-word, singular)
de andra … (plural)

In your sentence, hälften is a common-gender noun (en hälft → hälften), so the correct phrase is den andra hälften.