Adjectives That Look Like Adverbs
Three of these have an adverb sibling you already know, and Swedish keeps them apart by form:
| adjective | adverb you know |
|---|---|
| tidig (en tidig morgon) | tidigt (jag kom tidigt) |
| viss (en viss risk) | visst (det är visst sant) |
| direkt (ett direkt svar) | direkt (kom direkt hem) |
Viss is the trickiest: en viss person is a certain person — a particular one, not a confident one.
| There is a certain risk. | Det finns en viss risk. |
Worth, Full and Last
Värd is worth, and it takes what it is worth directly: boken är värd hundra kronor. Full is full — and, of a person, drunk; context decides, and Swedes rarely find that ambiguous. Sista is last in a sequence, and it almost always appears in the definite form: den sista dagen.
Similar, Evil, Lost
Lik means alike or resembling, and it takes a plain object: han är lik sin far. Do not confuse it with likadan, which means identical — same kind, not merely similar.
Ond is evil in the moral sense, much stronger than dålig (bad) or elak (mean). Förlorad is the past participle of förlora, used as an adjective: ett förlorat år.
| He looks a lot like his brother. | Han är mycket lik sin bror. |
