Hörnan kom precis före halvtid.

Here hörnan means the corner in a football/soccer sense, that is, the corner kick.

The basic noun is hörna, which literally means corner. In sports language, Swedish often uses the same word for the actual set piece:

• en hörna = a corner / a corner kick
• hörnan = the corner / the corner kick

So this is not talking about the corner of a room or street, but a football event.

Because hörnan is the definite singular form: the corner.

Swedish nouns usually have an ending attached to show the:

• en hörna = a corner
• hörnan = the corner

Since hörna is an en-word and ends in a vowel, the definite ending is just -n.

More examples:

• en vecka → veckan
• en dörr → dörren
• en hörna → hörnan

That is a very natural question. In Swedish sports language, kom can be used for something that came/arrived/occurred in the flow of the game.

So:

• Hörnan kom precis före halvtid
  means something like
• The corner came just before halftime
• The corner was awarded just before halftime
• The corner occurred just before halftime

English usually prefers a different verb, but Swedish often uses komma in this broader way.

Kom is the past tense of komma = to come.

So:

• komma = to come
• kommer = comes / is coming
• kom = came
• kommit = come

In this sentence, the action happened in the past, so kom is used.

Here precis means just or right in a time sense:

• precis före halvtid = just before halftime

It often means exactly or precisely, but in this sentence it has the natural English sense of just.

Compare:

• precis klockan tre = exactly at three o’clock
• precis före halvtid = just before halftime

Före is the most straightforward and standard preposition for before when it is followed by a noun:

• före halvtid = before halftime

Innan is very often used before a clause:

• innan domaren blåste för halvtid = before the referee blew for halftime

You may sometimes hear innan halvtid too, but före halvtid is especially natural here.

A simple rule:

• före + noun is very common
• innan + clause is especially common

Because Swedish often leaves out the article in fixed time expressions and in names of stages of an event.

So in sports, these are very natural:

• före halvtid = before halftime
• efter halvtid = after halftime
• i halvtid = at halftime

Using halvtiden is possible in some contexts, but it sounds more specifically like the halftime period as a particular identified thing. In this sentence, the bare noun halvtid is the normal choice.

Because Swedish normally writes compound nouns as one word.

So:

• halv = half
• tid = time
• halvtid = halftime

This is extremely common in Swedish. English often writes compounds as two words or with a hyphen, but Swedish usually prefers one word:

• fotbollsmatch = football match
• sommarlov = summer holiday
• halvtid = halftime

Yes. Swedish allows different word order depending on what you want to emphasize.

The original sentence:

• Hörnan kom precis före halvtid.

Another natural version:

• Precis före halvtid kom hörnan.

Both are correct. The second one puts more focus on when it happened.

A useful thing to remember is that Swedish main clauses follow the V2 rule: the finite verb usually comes in the second position. So if you move Precis före halvtid to the front, the verb kom still stays in second position:

• Precis före halvtid
  • kom
    • hörnan

The tricky part for many English speakers is ö.

A rough guide:

• hörnan sounds approximately like HUR-nan, but with a Swedish ö sound, not a normal English u
• före sounds approximately like FUR-eh, again with that Swedish ö

The ö sound is made with rounded lips. It does not have an exact English equivalent.

Very rough pronunciations:

• hörnan ≈ HER-nan / HUR-nan
• före ≈ FER-eh / FUR-eh

Those are only approximations, but they can help you get started.