Questions & Answers about Vad skallig han blir!
Why does the sentence start with 'Vad' when the English translation says 'How'?
In Swedish exclamations, vad is often used where English uses 'how'. When you want to express surprise or emphasize a quality, like 'How beautiful!' or 'How bald!', you start with vad followed directly by the adjective, making it vad skallig here.
How does using blir change the meaning compared to using är?
blir is the present tense of bli, which means 'to become' or 'to get'. If you said Vad skallig han är!, it would mean 'How bald he is!' (a fixed state). Using blir focuses on the change of state, showing that he is currently in the process of losing his hair.
Why isn't the verb in the second position? Shouldn't it be 'Vad skallig blir han!'?
Exclamations starting with vad don't follow the usual V2 (verb-second) rule that you see in main clauses. Instead, they use a word order where the subject (han) comes before the verb (blir). If you used the V2 word order and said Vad skallig blir han?, it would turn into a strange question rather than an exclamation.
Would the word skallig change if we were talking about more than one person?