In the minimal pairs section, a couple of the nouns have an a inserted in front of the word in the spoken word but not in the written. Vaca is pronouned “a vaca” and farinha is pronounced “a farinha.” When I looked up the English words cow and flour using DeepL, the first translations in português were vaca and farinha, but they also provided the alternatives a vaca and a farinha.
Is there a rule here? Does it depend on the context?
@barbara.lamar The nouns themselves are always just “vaca”, “farinha”, etc. The occasional “a” is just a definite article preceding the vowel (useful for users to know the gender of the noun!). We have a large audio database and some cross-referenced audios, so that was maybe the case for those audio examples, i.e. recorded for other uses where the definite article was relevant, but then also referenced in that section.
I think I remember having read something on PP why you put or you omit the definite article before a noun. But personally i would really appreciate it when you always put it when translating a noun in the quiz mode and flashcard section. Especially when sometimes the computer says “wrong” when we add or admit it in translating.