Learn Swedish: Vi missade planet på grund av säkerhetskontrollens kö. - We missed the plane because of the security check's queue.

Instead of using a full clause like eftersom det var kö vid säkerhetskontrollen (because there was a queue at the security check), the sentence compresses the idea into a noun phrase: säkerhetskontrollens kö. This makes the language more formal and compact, which is common in written Swedish.

Why use på grund av instead of eftersom here?

The phrase på grund av means 'because of' or 'due to' and must be followed by a noun phrase, making it a perfect trigger for the nominalized phrase säkerhetskontrollens kö. If you wanted to use eftersom (because), you would have to follow it with a full clause containing a subject and a verb.

Why is it kö and not kön after the possessive -s?

In Swedish, any noun that directly follows a possessive word (like a genitive ending in -s or a pronoun like min) must be written in the indefinite form. Even though we translate it as 'the queue' in English, the possessive säkerhetskontrollens already makes it specific, so we use kö instead of kön.

What are the building blocks of the long word säkerhetskontrollens?