Breakdown of Nämnde kollegan om mötet var idag?
vara
to be
idag
today
mötet
the meeting
kollegan
the colleague
Questions & Answers about Nämnde kollegan om mötet var idag?
Why does the second part of the sentence start with om?
In this sentence, om means "if" or "whether". It introduces a subordinate clause (a smaller sentence attached to the main one) to express a yes/no uncertainty. You use om here because you are talking about "whether" the meeting was today.
If the whole sentence is a question, why is the word order in the second part mötet var (subject-verb)?
The actual question structure happens in the main clause: Nämnde kollegan (Did the colleague mention). The second half, om mötet var idag, is a subordinate clause. Subordinate clauses keep their standard subject-verb word order, even when they are inside a larger question sentence.
Why does the sentence start with the verb Nämnde instead of a helper word like "Did"?
Swedish does not use helper verbs like "do" or "did" to ask questions. To form a yes/no question, you simply move the main verb to the very front. Nämnde kollegan literally translates to "Mentioned the colleague", which is the standard Swedish way to say "Did the colleague mention".
Why do both kollegan and mötet have extra letters attached to the end?
Both of these nouns are in their definite form, meaning "the colleague" and "the meeting". Kollega is an "en" word, so it adds an -n at the end to become kollegan. Möte is an "ett" word that ends in a vowel, so it adds a -t to become mötet.