Breakdown of De undrar vad som provocerar mest, samhällskritiken eller den kontroversiella stilen.
de
they
vad
what
eller
or
den
the (with en-words)
stilen
the style
undra
to wonder
som
who / which / that (relative pronoun)
mest
most
kontroversiell
controversial
provocera
to provoke
samhällskritiken
the social criticism
Questions & Answers about De undrar vad som provocerar mest, samhällskritiken eller den kontroversiella stilen.
Why is som required after vad in this sentence?
In Swedish, when an indirect question starts with a question word like vad (what), vem (who), or vilken (which), and that word is the subject of the embedded clause, you must add som. Here, "what" is the thing doing the provoking, making it the subject. If you leave out som, the grammar is considered incorrect.
What if the sentence was "They wonder what the style provokes"? Would we still use som?
No. In that case, "the style" (stilen) is the subject doing the provoking, and "what" (vad) is the object. Because vad is the object, you drop the som and write: De undrar vad stilen provocerar. You only insert som when the question word itself is the subject.
Why does the compound noun samhällskritiken have an 's' in the middle?
It is constructed from samhälle (society) and kritiken (the criticism). When joining nouns to make a compound word, Swedish often drops the final vowel of the first word (from samhälle to samhäll) and adds an 's' to glue them together. This connecting 's' is very common when the first word in the compound is a multisyllabic noun.
Why do we say den kontroversiella stilen instead of just den kontroversiella stil?
This is a reminder of Swedish "double definiteness." When you use an adjective to describe a specific, definite noun, you need both the freestanding definite article (den, det, or de) and the definite suffix on the noun itself (-en or -et). So it becomes den + kontroversiella + stil + en.
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