This was originally posted by devalanteriel
This archive post is from 2017. SWEDISH TEAM refers to the duolingo course contributors.
Not the Duome Team. Most of the information in this archive is outdated.
The items that were still actual dd MAR-2022 have been placed as individual posts under "Diskussioner => Allmän"
https://archive.ph/v0sOH#selection-141.0-165.0
The Swedish team decided it was time to put together an FAQ, to answer some very common questions in batch. 
Q: Why didn't you accept my synonym for mom, dad, or another family member?
A: We know that there are a lot of variations in what family members are called throughout the English-speaking world. But each translation has to be entered manually. There are some shortcuts, but not that many. So if the average sentence has 4-5 variations, and the word "mother" appears in about 30 sentences, we need to add it 120-150 times - possibly more! If people have 6-7 different synonyms for "mother", that's suddenly 720 additions minimum - and then we get to "father", "grandmother", and so on. Adding more variations to the 4-5 ones we do accept for each family member is simply not feasible, and since it's not that hard to use the "proper" names, we ask you to please stick to those throughout the course.
A Swedish proverb states that Kärt barn har många namn - A treasured child goes by many names. The Swedish course has certainly proven that!
Q: What's this "Tree 2.0" thing I keep hearing about?
A: We're currently rebuilding the course to make it even better, and to add more skills. For more information, please see the initial feedback thread here: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/11580398
Q: Oh wow, that sounds great! So when's it coming?
A: We don't know yet but we're actively working on it.
Q: Why do I have to spell out numbers?
A: When translating from Swedish into English, we do accept numbers - meaning both "twenty" and "20" are accepted, for instance. We might have missed some instances, so please report those. But when translating into Swedish, our intention is for you to learn the pronunciation and spelling of the word, so we don't accept numbers then.
Q: How does the typo system work?
A1: Generally, you're allowed one typo per word as long as it doesn't turn into another word. This can be very annoying at times, when it's obvious your answer was correct, but we can't affect this - and for the most time, the system works fine.
A2: One thing the system doesn't get quite right, however, is the use of apostrophes. For instance, when writing a phrase such as "my parents' apples", Duolingo will assume that the apostrophe is not part of the sentence, and tell you that you had a typo. This bug exists in all courses, and we can't affect it.
A3: Another occasional problem is that sentences might have extra spaces if an optional word is missing. For instance, if both "all of the apples" and "all the apples" are accepted translations of a phrase, Duolingo might tell you that you had a typo in the latter because it thinks the "of" should have been replaced with an extra space. This we actually can affect, so feel free to report it.
Q: Why won't you accept phrases that obviously mean the same thing as what I entered?
A: This is usually because of one of three things:
- What you entered is almost but not quite synonymous, and has a direct equivalent in Swedish.
- You changed the sentence construction. We'll accept small deviations, but since a major aim of the course is to teach not only Swedish vocabulary but also how things are phrased in Swedish, we tend not to accept solutions that move around things a lot.
- What you entered is technically correct, but unidiomatic. We get loads of these reported in Swedish by people who are obviously not native Swedish speakers. And while we encourage people to report mistakes, reporting things that are correct in English and hence "should" be correct in Swedish is not generally advisable.
Ultimately, there are hundreds of sentences where it could be argued either way. We try to be accepting, but we do make mistakes, and we reevaluate our decisions continuously.
Q: I forgot to report my problem when I encountered it, what do I do?
A: If you encounter it again, simply report it then. But if not, we have a few million learners, so if there's a problem with a sentence we are very confident that someone else will find it shortly.
Q: I'm not from the USA, why are you using American English?
A: We try to accomodate as many of the major English variations as possible. If we've missed a common word or spelling, by all means please do report that. However, we also need a default translation for every sentence, and Duolingo's courses for English speakers are all geared towards American English mainly. Should you dislike that policy, take it up with Duolingo - not with us, because we have no say over that. We've removed hundreds of reports about how much better British/Canadian/Australian English is, so please, please don't do that.
Q: I found an error. Should I use the "report a problem" button?
A: In general: sure - if you are certain that you're right. If you're not, we encourage you to post in the comments thread for the sentence, so that others can help you. If you're sure, please do send a report - that's the main way we can improve the course!
That said, we get tens of thousands of error reports, and over 90 % of those are very obviously incorrect. Please read your translation an extra time before sending, and please try to be extra careful if you're not a native English or Swedish speaker (depending on what you're reporting). Sorting through all of these error reports is manual labour, and actively prevents us from spending time developing the tree further - plus, there's a very real risk that we miss actually correct error reports amidst the sea of incorrect ones.
Q: What should I not write in a "freewrite report"?
A1: However you choose to write it, just please be aware that we can't see what you got wrong. We've had thousands - literally - of reports that say things like "My answer should have been correct", and we have absolutely no idea what you entered, so all we can do is to delete the report. We also can't see who wrote the report, so we can't ask, either.
A2: The typo system is not handled by us (see above), so please don't write reports about "My answer was only a typo, you should accept it!"
A3: Please don't write to tell us how superior British English is to American English (see above).
Q: Should I write a comment when I don't understand what I got wrong?
A: Yes! Definitely yes. It's an excellent way of learning, and there are many users - natives and otherwise - who post marvelous answers. However, we have no idea what you entered, nor what kind of exercise you got - translation, type what you hear, etc. - so please be explicit in writing out exactly what you got wrong and what exercise type it was.
Q: Can I delete comments I've written?
A: Yes, although we prefer if people don't delete their old comments - they might still be of use to other learners. If you really have to delete a comment which has replies, please ask a moderator to instead - otherwise it'll make all child comments unremovable.
Q: The voice says "dom" but the spelling says de or dem. What's up with that?
A: Both de and dem are pronounced dom by the vast majority of Swedes. In fact, they're two of the most commonly misspelled words by natives, so don't get discouraged if you get them wrong. Now, we accept dom anywhere that either of those are accepted (and if we don't - shoot us an error report!), but it should be noted that dom is colloquial.
That said, however, the "type what you hear" exercises have an annoying bug which will mark you wrong if you type anything but the default translation - even if there are multiple correct choices. Unfortunately, this leaves us the choice of either making dom a default everywhere, which would be terrible for the course, or having learners be told that they're wrong for writing dom, which is unkind to learners.
Ultimately, we think that the latter option is better - and we do want to teach you de/dem anyway. Hopefully, Duolingo developers will eventually fix the bug to make the problem go away.
Q: Is it i dag or idag? The machine says I made a typo!
A: In short: both are perfectly fine. The Swedish language council recommends the spelling i dag, so we go by their recommendation as a default, but both are always acceptable in any kind of writing.
The problem is that Duolingo stopped recognising this a while ago. So if you type idag, it will occasionally claim that you made a typo. Rest assured that you did not. We've reported this as a bug as well, but we don't know when it might be resolved.
For more information, please refer to Arnauti's thread here: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/12941839
Q: Why do some "translate to Swedish" excercises use unidiomatic English?
A: It's important to learn Swedish sentence construction, and we'll occasionally use the English phrase that corresponds the best with the Swedish sentence in order to force you to think in that way - even though it might mean that another English phrase would be a lot better. Further, this is closely related to the next question in the FAQ.
Q: Why do some "translate to English" exercises use unidiomatic English in their default translations?
A: It's mostly because of the way "translate to Swedish" exercises work. These are generated from the "translate to English" exercises automatically, using the default translation for each sentence. In other words: if we choose the most idiomatic English translation in the "translate to English" exercises, this may occasionally lead to "translate to Swedish" exercises that make little sense to have in the course. Ideally, we would have preferred to separate these concepts entirely, but we have no technical option of doing so.
Q: I've never heard the word "swum" before! I'm a native English speaker. Clearly it does not exist.
A: Sorry. Despite the massive amounts of reports requesting to remove words like "swum" and "rung", we'll stick to the grammar books on these ones, if only for the benefit of learners who don't speak native English.
Q: Other courses offer bonus skills, why don't you?
A: Two bonus skills have been prepared and waiting for a very long time now. Unfortunately, they are being held back for technical reasons. We don't know what these reasons are, nor when they might be fixed, but we'd be thrilled to finally offer you some bonus lessons.
On a related note, the Swedish team thoroughly dislikes the flirting bonus skill, so that's not coming at all.