Breakdown of Varde ljus i brudens och brudgummens hem!
och
and
i
in
hemmet
the home
ljuset
the light
bruden
the bride
brudgummen
the bridegroom
varda
to become (archaic)
Questions & Answers about Varde ljus i brudens och brudgummens hem!
What verb is varde from, and why does it have an -e ending?
Varde is the optative (or present subjunctive) form of the archaic verb varda, which means 'to become' (similar to bli). The optative form ends in -e and is used here to express a formal wish or command, echoing the Swedish translation of the biblical phrase 'let there be light'. You will not use varda in everyday speech, but its optative form survives in this fixed expression.
Why does the sentence start with the verb varde instead of the subject ljus?
In Swedish, placing the verb first is standard for imperative commands and optative wishes. Just like Leve kungen! (Long live the king!), the verb comes before the subject to signal that this is a grand wish or an exclamation rather than a regular statement of fact.
Why do both brudens and brudgummens have an -s ending? In English we would usually just say 'the bride and groom's'.
In Swedish, when two or more owners are connected by och (and), you generally attach the genitive -s to all of them. So it translates literally to 'the bride's and the groom's'. This is the standard grammatical rule, although in very casual modern speech you might occasionally hear the -s attached only to the final word.
Since there are two people, why isn't hem written in a plural form?
Hem (home) is an ett-word ending in a consonant, which means it looks exactly the same in both singular and plural (ett hem, flera hem). However, in this context, it refers to the single, shared home of the newlywed couple, so it functions as a singular noun.
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