"De bygger en ny moské i staden."

Translation: They are building a new mosque in town.

[RJDaae]

Can this mean a hypothetical/general 'they' in Swedish the way that it can in English, or just a specific one?

[6vrv9Zo1]

Yes! It can mean a general 'they'/'de'.

[HaniAl-seb]

I'm always confused by the é letter. What is it for? Why is it used sometimes?

[raorn]

My guess is that is the accent location. In swedish language accent is on the first syllable, but there are exceptions. Mosqué, ideé...

[devalanteriel]

You're right, but it's not something Swedish words do in general. All (or almost all) such words are French loans that retained the é in Swedish.

[ahferroin7]

Essentially equivalent to words like meleé, naïve, or protégé in English, though English is very consistently losing diacritical marks on almost all loan words (with the curious exception of ‘ñ’ in ‘modern’ loans from Spanish), probably largely due to many people not being able to type them on physical keyboards and most people not knowing how to type them on a phone (even though you can type them on almost any virtual keyboard).

[raorn]

*moské

[Autrelle]

Why isn't it "in the town"?

[devalanteriel]

It's idiomatic in Swedish to always use the definite for "in town", where English prefers not to. But we do accept "in the town" (and "in the city") as well.

[cscott00]

English definitely prefers "in town" over "in the town".

[devalanteriel]

Yes, just like I said.

[gerda575830]

De bygger.....they build is just as correct as ....they are building. So why do you disapprove if that???

[rz.lx]

As far as I see, they build... is an accepted translation, as it should be. Perhaps you had another error or it was simply a bug.