"Är det ett virus?"

Translation: Is it a virus?

[bradleyturumbar]

She pronounces this "Är det virus?" Is that right? Is it a contraction?

[devalanteriel]

The t in "det" is dropped more often than not in normal speech, with the e changing shape slightly. In conjunction, those effects cause "det" to end with practically the same vowel as "ett" gör, so they kind of merge, and for a non-native speaker it can be very hard to hear the difference. I can hear both words clearly, but I can also definitely see why that might not be so easy.

[Berniebud]

It's correct, although pronounced quite a bit faster than I usually hear by native speakers.

[Sninguistics]

Some of the pictures Duolingo uses at the beginning of the lesson are super funky. Like what even is the picture for ett virus supposed to be...?

[HoroTanuki]

If a picture hasn't changed, it's a virus with a phospholipid envelope and nucleic acid inside

[Sninguistics]

I don't remember what the picture was, but I sure don't remember it being that. May've changed.

[Arnauti]

They pick them from some database and we can only pick sets of images, not remove some of them. Which for instance makes us unable to use the sets for "wall" and "nose". And the images can change at any time without us noticing.

I guess you're talking about this one:

[Sninguistics]

Yikes, yeah. I do remember something freaky being the image and that's something freaky! Oh well.

[fl1ppyf1sh]

By complete coincidence, I got to this skill at the same time that I'm coming down with the coronavirus, and a lot of these are feeling very on-the-nose