About
Swedish for making a life in Sweden
Nidova is for learning to read, hear and understand real Swedish — the Swedish that Swedes actually read and listen to, not just the phrases an app can teach you.
Who it's for
People who've just moved here
Somebody who has moved to Sweden, or is about to, and needs the language for the ordinary business of a life here: the letter from the landlord, the signs at the station, what the other parents are saying at pick-up, the news everyone else has already heard.
That's a different goal from holiday phrases, and it changes what the app teaches. From the second level onwards the situational vocabulary leans towards housing, money, appointments, work and the bureaucracy of settling somewhere — the parts of Swedish that a newcomer needs early and a phrasebook never gets to.
The approach
The lessons are a means to an end
Words and exercises are there so the next thing you read or listen to is something you can follow, and then the one after that — until you're spending your time on Swedish that was never written for learners. That's why the app keeps putting the real thing in front of you, and why some of it will be too hard.
So drills are a small part of the day rather than the product. An hour here puts real Swedish in front of you rather than another set of cards.
The honesty rule
Where the numbers come from
Every number in the app comes from something that actually happened: a review you got right, a lesson you finished, a word you still knew three weeks later. Nothing is invented to make the screen look busier.
That makes it often unflattering. You'll always have finished more lessons than you have words you reliably remember, and both are on screen. Words that keep slipping away are labelled that way. When a progress-screen decision is close, the truer reading wins even where it flatters you less.
The same rule governs everything built to bring you back. Streaks are off by default for language learning, because a streak measures whether you opened an app and nothing else. There are no notifications engineered to make you feel bad for a quiet week.
The limits
What it can't do
It can't hear you. Nothing here judges your pronunciation or your speaking, and nothing is planned that would. Speaking needs other people — a conversation group, a course, a patient colleague. What this can do is get you to the point where you understand what they say back.
It isn't finished. Only the beginner level is a complete path; the front page has the breakdown of what exists above it and how far it takes you.
Who's behind it
I write the curriculum and build the app
There's no company behind Nidova and no team. The person who wrote the lesson you're reading is the same person who reads your bug report, at nidovaapp@gmail.com.