Breakdown of Vilken pinsam situation! Det är svårt att glömma.
vara
to be
det
it (neuter)
att
to
svår
difficult
vilken
which (en) / what a (en-word, exclamatory)
glömma
to forget
situationen
the situation
pinsam
embarrassing
Questions & Answers about Vilken pinsam situation! Det är svårt att glömma.
Why does svårt have a -t at the end?
In this sentence, svårt describes the action att glömma (to forget). Whenever you use an adjective to evaluate an infinitive phrase, the adjective must be in its neuter form, usually ending in -t. This goes hand in hand with using the neutral pronoun det (it) as the subject.
Why do we use vilken instead of a word like vad for 'what'?
Because it looks like the English word 'pain', does pinsam mean 'painful'?
No, this is a common false friend! The word pinsam specifically means embarrassing or awkward. If you want to say that something is physically or emotionally painful, you would use a word like smärtsam.
In English, we would usually say 'difficult to forget it'. Why is there no word for 'it' at the end of the Swedish sentence?
In Swedish, it is very common to drop the object pronoun in an adjective plus infinitive construction if the thing you are referring to is already obvious from the context. You could say svårt att glömma den, but leaving it out sounds perfectly natural and idiomatic.
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