Breakdown of Vad är det för knopp?
vara
to be
det
it (neuter)
vad
what
vad ... för
what kind of (in 'vad ... för')
knoppen
the bud
Questions & Answers about Vad är det för knopp?
Why are vad and för separated in this sentence?
This split is the standard way to ask "what kind of" in Swedish. Instead of keeping the phrase together at the beginning, Swedish starts with the question word vad (what), puts the verb är (is) and subject det (that) in the second and third positions, and drops för right before the noun knopp (bud).
Could I use vilken instead of vad ... för here?
They actually mean different things! You would use vilken knopp if you wanted to ask "which bud?" to identify a specific one from a group. Because we are asking "what kind of bud?" to find out its species or characteristics, we must use the vad ... för construction.
Can I say vad är det för en knopp instead?
Yes, absolutely. It is very common in spoken Swedish to include the article and say vad är det för en knopp (or ett for ett-words). Dropping the article, as done in this sentence, is also perfectly correct and often sounds just a little bit more concise.
How would the word order change if I made this an indirect question, like "I wonder what kind of bud that is"?
If you turn this into an indirect question, it becomes a subordinate clause, meaning the subject and verb must swap places. It would become Jag undrar vad det är för knopp. Notice that the subject det now comes before the verb är, but the vad ... för split still brackets them in the same way!
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