"På nittiotalet bodde jag i Ryssland."
Translation:In the nineties, I lived in Russia.
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It's our old friend V2. In all main clauses that are not questions, the verb needs to go in second place. På nittiotalet is a time adverbial that fills the first place, so you absolutely need to have the verb right after that.
Your rearrangement works fine, it just changes the information structure.
Sorry but I have another question about this.... How do you know that this isn't a question then? meaning 'in the 90's did i live in russia?' I know that particular question seems stupid to ask, but if you swap 'jag' for 'du' it could be very confusing....
In the 90's did you live in Russia? = På nittiotalet bodde du i Ryssland? = In the 90's you lived in Russia
The only solution I can think of is that either a) it's dependent on the tone, or b) perhaps if it's a question the 'På nittiotalet' HAS to go at the end of the sentence?
Tack!
Normal questions are created by putting the verb before the subject, and the only thing that can go before the verb in a 'real' question is a question word, like e.g. När 'When'. So yes, if you have an adverbial first, you already know it's not a normal question.
Second, it's also possible to create questions in Swedish without changing word order, just by using intonation, and then På 90-talet bodde du i R.? could be a question. But, then it ought to be translated into an English question with statement word order too, so it would be In the 90s you lived in R? rather than In the 90s did you live…?, since in that one you have question word order from 'did you live'. So the English question construction with 'did you X' is a little more versatile with regards to word order.
Edit: Just wanted to say that i am a native Swede, so my grip on the language is pretty strong.
The first word order you suggest doesn't work, if i were to translate how it sounds to a native speaker it would be something like "In the nineties I live in Russia", you would be understood, but it isn't very correct. To answer the second question, yes, you can without issues say the second wording.