Questions & Answers about Nu är tallriken bortplockad.
Swedish has two main ways to express a passive/result:
Stative passive: vara + past participle
- Nu är tallriken bortplockad.
- Focus: the state the plate is in now (it is in the “cleared-away” state).
Event/dynamic passive: bli/vara + past participle or har + passive form
- Nu har tallriken plockats bort.
- Focus: the action of someone clearing it away.
In your sentence, är bortplockad describes the resulting state after someone has cleared the plate away, not the action itself. That’s why är + participle is used instead of har plockats bort.
Bortplockad comes from the verb phrase plocka bort:
- plocka = to pick, to pick up, to gather
- bort = away (a particle meaning “away, off, removed”)
Together, plocka bort ≈ “to clear away / to remove (by picking up)”.
The past participle of plocka bort is formed by:
- turning plocka into plockad (regular -a verb → -ad participle)
- attaching the particle bort in front → bortplockad
So bortplockad literally means “away-picked”, i.e. “cleared away / removed”.
Swedish usually marks definiteness with an ending on the noun, not with a separate article:
- en tallrik = a plate
- tallriken = the plate
You normally do not say den tallriken. The separate definite article (den, det, de) is only used in specific cases, for example:
- den stora tallriken = the big plate
(adjective + noun in definite form)
Here there is no adjective, so you just use tallriken for the plate.
In Swedish, vara (är) + past participle often describes a present state that results from a past action:
- Nu är tallriken bortplockad.
Literally: “Now the plate is cleared-away.”
Meaning: Now the plate has been cleared away and is in that state.
English tends to emphasize the past action more and uses has been + past participle, but Swedish comfortably uses present är because it focuses on the current result: the plate is in a cleared-away state.
Tallrik is an en-word (common gender):
- Indefinite singular: en tallrik (a plate)
- Definite singular: tallriken (the plate)
- Indefinite plural: tallrikar (plates)
- Definite plural: tallrikarna (the plates)
In your sentence, tallriken is definite singular because you’re talking about a specific plate that both speaker and listener can identify.
The past participle agrees with the noun it refers to in gender and number when used predicatively like this:
- For en-words (common gender, singular): -ad
- For ett-words (neuter, singular): -at
- For plural: -ade
Since tallrik is an en-word and it’s singular definite (tallriken), the participle must be:
- tallriken är bortplockad
If it were an ett-word, it would change:
- glaset är bortplockat (the glass is cleared away)
Plural:
- tallrikarna är bortplockade (the plates are cleared away)
No. Swedish has a verb-second (V2) rule in main clauses:
- The finite verb (here: är) must be in second position.
If you put an adverb or time word like Nu first, the verb must come immediately after:
- ✔ Nu är tallriken bortplockad.
- ✘ Nu tallriken är bortplockad. (incorrect word order)
If you don’t start with Nu, you can say:
- Tallriken är bortplockad nu.
(Subject first, then verb, then nu at the end.)
Both can describe the same situation, but they focus on different things:
Nu är tallriken bortplockad.
- Focus: the resulting state of the plate (it’s gone, cleared away).
- The agent (who did it) is not mentioned and not important.
Nu har man plockat bort tallriken.
- Literally: “Now one/they have cleared away the plate.”
- Focus: the action that someone (unspecified) has performed.
- man is an impersonal subject similar to “they/people/one”.
In everyday speech, if you just care that the plate is gone, Tallriken är bortplockad is very natural. If you want to talk about the action or subtly point out that someone did it, man har plockat bort tallriken works.
Yes, it functions as part of a passive-like construction:
- It is a past participle derived from an active verb (plocka bort).
- With vara (är), it forms what’s often called a stative passive:
the focus is on the state, not on who did the action.
Compare:
- Active: Någon plockade bort tallriken.
(Someone cleared away the plate.) - Stative passive: Tallriken är bortplockad.
(The plate is in the cleared-away state.)
So bortplockad itself is a participle, and the whole phrase är bortplockad functions similarly to a passive in English.
Yes, the participle can be used attributively (before a noun), but it’s not very common in everyday speech in this exact case. Grammatically it works like an adjective:
- den bortplockade tallriken
= the plate that has been cleared away
You’ll see this kind of structure more often in written or formal Swedish, or with other verbs:
- den stängda dörren = the closed door
- det bortglömda brevet = the forgotten letter
Yes, it is natural, though context matters. Possible alternatives a native speaker might also use are:
- Tallriken är borta nu. (less specific, just “the plate is gone now”)
- Nu har de tagit bort tallriken. (emphasizes that “they” took it away)
- Nu har de plockat bort tallriken.
Your sentence is perfectly idiomatic to describe the state of a specific plate that has been cleared away, for example when checking whether the table has been cleared.
Yes, you can say:
- Tallriken är bortplockad nu.
The basic meaning is the same. The difference is focus and rhythm:
- Nu är tallriken bortplockad.
→ Slightly more emphasis on the time (“Now…”). - Tallriken är bortplockad nu.
→ Slightly more emphasis on the plate and its state, adding nu as extra info at the end.
Both are correct and natural.