What is the best mechanism for reporting errors found in the spelling convention used in the exercises? In one of the A1 lessons, I was required to make an answer that required the word “contato”, except that the only form accepted was the old one (“contacto”). I did make a screenshot in case that helps.
I’ve noticed that a lot of people in Portugal have trouble with this. In fact, I had an idiot professor in a Universidade Aberta program who insisted on “perfect” writing for student assignments but who was herself incapable of writing any paragraph without making such errors.
@kslossner, you can always ask questions/report issues from within the units. All you need to do is click on the 3-dot menu to the right of the progress bar and select Report a Problem, before moving on to the next question. It will automatically send us information about that question (including the answer you gave/selected, so you don’t have to copy paste it).
Please note that in that specific exercise you mentioned, the spelling of contacto is correct. By default, the middle C is pronounced in Portugal and should be kept. The spelling contato is valid for Brazilian Portuguese. But we might have missed other typos here and there, so do let us know whenever you find something off!
Aha! I never looked at those three dots, thank you!
My understanding of the whole Acordo Ortográfica was that Brazil and Portugal were to use the same orthography, which I know a lot here dislike because of how that obscures many of the obvious Latin etymologies. Not many people seem to have a good grip on the changes, unfortunately. I had a professor in an Uni Aberta course who insisted that all students were expected to submit their written work in perfect Portuguese according to the AO, but she herself could hardly manage a compliant sentence.
@kslossner, Brazil and Portugal are to follow the same orthographic norms, which doesn’t always result in the same exact final spelling. For example, both countries now follow the norm of omitting mute consonants, but if the same consonant is not actually mute in one of the variants, it will stay and we end up with two possible spellings. That’s what happens with contato/contacto and other words.