Breakdown of Vi frågade hundra personer, varav nittio procent svarade.
vi
we
fråga
to ask
nittio
ninety
hundra
a hundred
svara
to answer
personen
the person (an individual)
varav
of which
procent
percent
Questions & Answers about Vi frågade hundra personer, varav nittio procent svarade.
Could I say av vilka instead of varav since it refers to people?
Yes, you could say av vilka (of whom), but varav is much more common and idiomatic in Swedish for expressing subsets. Interestingly, even though it refers to people here, Swedish still uses varav (literally "where-of"), which works perfectly for both people and things.
How does the word order work in the second half of the sentence?
In the relative clause, the entire phrase varav nittio procent acts as the subject. Because it functions as the connecting relative phrase, it sits at the very beginning of the clause and is immediately followed by the verb svarade.
Why isn't the word procent pluralized since there are ninety of them?
The word procent is an en-word that looks exactly the same in both the singular and the plural. You say en procent and nittio procent. The plural form procenter exists but is mostly used in slang or a few fixed expressions, not for standard statistics.
Can varav be separated from the quantity it describes?
No, you generally must keep varav right next to the subset it introduces. Saying something like varav svarade nittio procent would be incorrect word order. The subset phrase varav nittio procent is a single grammatical unit here.
Learn Vi frågade hundra personer, varav nittio procent svarade and more in Swedish
All course content and exercises are completely free — no paywalls, no trial periods, no signup needed.
- ✓ Practice with interactive exercises
- ✓ Track your progress with spaced repetition
- ✓Learn at your own pace — completely free