Breakdown of Är kandidaten både kvalificerad och trevlig?
vara
to be
och
and
trevlig
nice (pleasant, friendly)
kandidaten
the candidate
både
both
kvalificerad
qualified
Questions & Answers about Är kandidaten både kvalificerad och trevlig?
How does både ... och work in this sentence?
Både means "both" and och means "and". Together they form a pair used to link two similar things—in this case, the two adjectives describing the candidate: kvalificerad (qualified) and trevlig (nice). Just like in English, they wrap around the first item in the list!
Why do kvalificerad and trevlig not have an -a or -t at the end?
Adjectives in Swedish change their endings to match the noun they describe. Here, they describe kandidaten (the candidate), which is a singular en-word (from en kandidat). Because of this, both adjectives stay in their basic form. If the noun were an ett-word, they would end in -t, and if it were plural, they would end in -a.
Kvalificerad looks like a verb in the past tense. Is it an adjective here?
Yes! It is technically a past participle (a verb form used to describe a state, like "qualified" in English), but it acts exactly like a normal adjective in this sentence. It describes the noun kandidaten and will change its ending to match the noun's gender and number, just like trevlig does.
If I wanted to say "The candidate is both qualified and nice", how does the word order change?
You would say: Kandidaten är både kvalificerad och trevlig. In a normal statement, the verb (är) comes in the second position right after the subject. Because our original sentence is a yes/no question, the subject (kandidaten) and the verb (är) swap places so the verb comes first.
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