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Questions & Answers about Semestern var skön.
Why does semestern mean vacation? Doesn't it mean a school semester?
It is a false friend! In Swedish, en semester means a vacation or time off work. If you want to talk about a school term, you use the word en termin.
How do we get semestern from semester? Shouldn't the definite form be semesteren?
When an en-word ends in an unstressed -er, we drop the extra e before adding the -en ending. This makes it easier to pronounce, giving us semestern instead of semesteren.
Is var the past tense for all subjects?
Yes! var is the past tense of vara (to be). It translates to both was and were. Swedish verbs do not change depending on who or what is doing the action, so whether you want to say I was, they were, or the vacation was, you always use var.
Why is the adjective skön here instead of skönt?
Adjectives have to match the noun they describe. Since semester is an en-word and there is only one of them, the adjective uses its basic form: skön. If it were an ett-word, you would add a -t to make it skönt.