Image by user ijm2000 at Pixabay. License: CC0 Public Domain

Hey! It’s the fuzz! Run away! Careful, now! Cheers!

All of those are examples of exclamations, known this way because they are short phrases we exclaim. Some or all instances might be called interjections, depending on whom you ask.

In Swedish, as in many other languages, there are various types of interjections. The kind we’ll be going into today are those that are expressed with vad or vilken. Vad, for those of you who may be unaware, normally means “what”. Similarly, vilken means “which”.

There are also other ways to make exclamations, for example with the imperative form of a verb. For example, Spring! means Run! as an exclamation. When you make exclamations with vad or vilken, though, they are of the type “How rustic!” and “What a friendly dog!”.

Exclamations with vad and vilken are used to emphasize a certain quality in something, presented in the form of an adjective. But be careful – theses two are generally not interchangeable! So, then, vad is the difference?

Simply put, vad corresponds to English exclamations with “how”. Here’s an example conversation:

Oskar: Min mormor ska baka kakor till oss.
Mats: Vad snällt!

Oskar: My grandma is going to bake cookies for us.
Mats: How kind!

This is the kind of exclamation you can make with vad. Vad is always followed by an adjective when making exclamations.

Notice here that Mats uses the neuter form of the adjective (snällt instead of snäll) because he is referring to the kind act of Oskar’s grandma. Mats’ reply can easily be adjusted to refer to the kindness of the woman herself instead:

Mats: Vad snäll hon är! – How kind she is!

Notice here that snällt is changed to snäll in congruency with the human subject mormor. This is a very common kind of exclamation in Swedish!

Now, let’s move on to using vilken to make exclamations. Exclamations with vilken are always followed by a noun phrase. Here’s another reply Mats could have used, using vilken instead of vad:

Mats: Vilken snäll mormor! – What a kind grandma!

The noun phrase is, of course mormor with the adjective snäll preceding it (snäll mormor). Notice that both vilken and snäll are conjugated based on the grammatical gender of mormor (common gender).

As you can see, this is a slightly different kind of exclamation than the ones using vad. Even more different would be if you left out the adjective completely!

Mats: Vilken mormor! – What a grandma!

(This is an exclamation I would use with my grandma if she knew Swedish. Just sayin’.)

In short, you could say that vad means “how” as it is used in exclamations: Vad häftigt! “How cool!”. Contrarily, vilken means “what a(n)” in exclamations: Vilket häftigt hus! “What a cool house!”.

Now, spring! Exclaim your life to the fullest!