Learn Swedish: Hjälper du kvinnan? - Are you helping the woman?

Hjälper belongs to a group of verbs (Group 2) that form their present tense by adding -er. The dictionary form (infinitive) is hjälpa (to help). To make it present tense, you drop the final -a to get the stem (hjälp) and add -er, giving you hjälper.

Where is the word for "are" in this sentence?

Swedish doesn't use "are" or "do" to form questions or show ongoing actions. The single word hjälper covers both "help" and "are helping". Therefore, Hjälper du translates naturally to "Are you helping?" or "Do you help?" depending on the context.

Why is the verb hjälper the very first word here?

To ask a yes/no question in Swedish, you simply swap the order of the subject and the verb. The standard statement is Du hjälper (You help / You are helping). By putting the verb first, it becomes the question Hjälper du? (Are you helping?).

How do we get kvinnan from the word kvinna?

Kvinna means "a woman", but we need to say "the woman". Instead of using a separate word for "the", Swedish attaches an ending to the noun. For en-words that already end in a vowel like kvinna, you just add an -n to the end to make it kvinnan.