"Han slutade svara i telefon."
Translation:He stopped answering the phone.
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Mostly because of the telefon, I'd say. For instance, you svarar på email.
No, that sounds like he's talking to the phone itself. Possibly if he's talking to Siri… :)
svara i telefon is a set construction
My mind always jumps to "He stopped swearing in the telephone" with this sentence.
Why wouldn't we write "Han slutade att svara i telefon" ? I thought the word "att" could be missed if preceded of "vill"
You can add the att if you want to in this case. It sounds better without it imho but it isn't wrong to add it. There's some more about it here: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/7075383
I wrote, 'he finished answering the telephone', but this was marked incorrect, though I don't think it's different to 'he stopped answering the telephone'. Or?
I think the sentence is supposed to mean that he was old or lazy or ill and he stopped answering any calls for a period of time. "He finished answering the telephone" really means the end of just a single call.
'Finish' and 'stop' can often be used interchangeably in English, but in this case the meaning is different.
It isn't. They just happen to be the fourth word in their respective sentences.
the english sentence is without preposition and the swedish one is without article
Yes. That is because this is an expression where Swedish prefers the indefinite, while English prefers definite.
If he answered the phone this time, then finished answering, could you also use sluta? Or would something else be better?
You'd need to say something like han avslutade telefonsamtalet ('he finished the phone call') for that. Han slutade svara i telefon is understood to mean 'he quit answering the phone', not that he was done with answering one specific call.