I agree with the strictness. But for example I feel quite comfortable with letters with accents. Just check the hungarian alphabet and you will know why. 
I can memorize them without problem and I always say every word at least in my head so I know when the “o” is “ö” and the “a” is “å”…etc. But it kills me when I have to type this on a keyboard that does not have it. (yes, I can still change the layout of it but too much mess)
I don’t think ‘a’ should be accepted for ‘å’ or ‘ä’, or ‘o’ for ‘ö’. Even if they look similar, they’re different letters that make different sounds.
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Is ‘att’ actually pronounced like ‘oo’, with the t’s silent, or is it like ‘at’? She says ‘oo’ sometimes and ‘at’ other times.
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Good question! I have wondered that, too.
I think it might be the case that “å” is the common spoken Swedish pronunciation for “att” used when it precedes an infinitive, but I think it might be pronounced differently when it is used to mean “that” or is combined with “för” (“för att”) to mean “because”.
I have seen Swedish people use “å” on the internet in place of “att”, I think, a few times.
So if someone says, “Det har inget å göra med det” = det har inget att göra med det (it has nothing TO do with that), then you would have an “O” sound, but if someone said, “jag visste inte att han inte kunde komma” (I didn’t know that he couldn’t come), I think the “att” in that case might be pronounced differently from the “to” version of “att”.
But I am really not sure so thanks very much for asking the question!
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I hope no one has asked this before. When you pronounce the att in front of an infinitive, it sounds a lot like å. How common is this? In the Duolingo Swedish course, it is pronounced att, and that is also how I have been taught to pronounce it. What sort of Swedish is taught here in terms of region and social group? Thank you for a great course! 
Just realised the previous person to comment asked a similar question! Feel a bit silly now. I would still like to know about regions and social groups though. Is this the type of Swedish that would be spoken in the news? Another thing: What is the difference between Var kommer du ifrån? and Varifrån kommer du?
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Are you by any chance in Stockholm? Stockholmare are quite known of speaking veeeery slowly, to the point that everyone else is mocking them for it. It is however a heavenly dream for a language learner
As for the “någon”… you can pronounce the whole thing, but it’s more common that they only say “nån” instead, “nåt” for något, “sån” for “sådan” and so on. (Sometimes it becomes a cute little diphthong of two å-sounds, “nå-ån” but that’s quite rare and might be only dialectal.) It’s more common to say [någon] when you mean ‘someone’ and [nån], when you mean ‘some’ in front of an en-word.
And for the “skulle vilja” problem: you might very well pronounce every single word in the phrase, but more often than not the native Swedish speaker will just say “skullja”, and kind of swallowing the last syllable, just like on the course audio. It you listen very carefully, you can even hear it.
As for your other complaints, I absolutely agree, the lack of consistency, the random structure of the course, the lack of grammatical awareness (and explanation) it why I gave up on the official courses, and concentrate my efforts on other courses.
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@amanda-norrsken answered your att-question perfectly.
When att is an infinitive marker, it can be pronounced both [at:] and [å]. When it is a conjunction (when it means ‘that’) it is pronounced [at:].
I’m not quite sure about the regional dialect of the audio, but it sounds like riksvenska, the standard, official version of the language.
And for the difference between “Var kommer du ifrån?” and “Varifrån kommer du?”… Well, the answer is nothing. No difference whatsoever.
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Well, it’s actually a simple thing: it depends on the grammatical gender (genus) of the word you are referring to. If it is an “en-word” then it’s going to be den, if it is an 'ett-word" it’s going to be det.
Var ligger posten?
Den ligger andra sidan torget.
Var är kontoret?
Det ligger på Järnvägsgatan.
It can get a bit more complicated than this, but it’s pretty much the main idea. In this case, as far as I can recall, this sentence was referring to a toilet, that’s the line before this one in the course. (Var ligger toaletten? Den ligger…)
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Is it also common for native Swedes to just say “där” instead of “den där”? For instance, the recording says “vad är där?” instead of “vad är den där?” I’m guessing it’s just another one of their things, sort of like contractions in English.
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It’s not something I’m familiar with. The emphasis is on the “där” in a sentence like this, but the den/det (or at least a [də’]) should be there, as far as I’m aware.
(On another note – wouldn’t it be better to open a separate topic for things like these? Like “General Swedish help” or something like that? Where people can ask grammar questions?)
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Tack! The context is what I was missing, I think. It was during a review later that I was having problems with it, and it was driving me crazy since I wasn’t getting the context of the previous sentence.
Thank you for the detailed answer!
I am situated in Borlänge. They are not speaking slowly but it is not so difficult to understand them. They keep small pauses between the words and the sentence does not sound as one very long word. And usually (but not always) they pronounce the world as it “should be”.
I am hoping that they will improve the courses because I think they could attract more people and also keep the current learners if the courses are more consistent and having better materials. Unfortunately I can only help them by reporting mistakes and weird stuff but I hope it is something that helps.
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Recently something frustrating has been happening when reviewing Swedish 5. I keep being asked to translate completely, and there’s no way at all to determine whether I’m supposed to use alldeles or fullständigt. I keep getting them both in the same review session, which is making me slightly crazy 
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In Swedish 3, level 5, it still says that "Danmark" is the Swedish word for Sweden. It would be nice if someone could fix that problem, since it can be very confusing.
Also, in Swedish 3, level 6, the audio for "författare" doesn't work at all.
Thanks!
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In Swedish 3, level 5, it still says that “Danmark” is the Swedish word for Sweden. It would be nice if someone could fix that problem, since it can be very confusing. Also, in Swedish 3, level 6, the audio for “författare” doesn’t work at all. Thanks!
(I had to repost this comment because something went wrong with the first one)
On the 8,000+ Most Common Swedish Words courses (parts 1 - 4), I have tried to get around this problem by finding collocations (word partnerships, if you are not familiar with this technical term) where only one of the synonyms is used, but sometimes it is really difficult to find them!)
With “alldeles”, I found the expression, “alldeles nyss” - which means “only a moment ago”. The phrase “fullständigt nyss” doesn’t exist to my knowledge, so in the 8K+ courses it is clear - in most cases - which synonym is needed. But these changes have only been made because I - like you - got incredibly frustrated by being unable to get these word pairs right because the only way I could get it right was by simple guessing 
“fullständigt” is more difficult, but if only one of the words has a prompt, then it should be clear tht the other word is well… the other word LOL
Maybe you can suggest this solution to the people at memrise, daisywreath!
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