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Posts Tagged ‘duolingo’

Duolingo Adds isiZulu. And More.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 14, 2025| 11 Comments »

The Duolingo bird can be very encouraging to a language learner. But it can also get angry.

With Suzanne’s family leaving soon for six months in Stockholm, I’ve been trying to learn some Swedish. I hope to try it on my grandchildren come next January. So it’s daily Duolingo for me. If I ever get to the point where I can understand Erik when he uses Swedish with the kids, I might also try expanding my French. I like the way the silly Duolingo bird cheers me on.

I was surprised to learn how many new languages the app has been adding lately. In the beginning, it didn’t even have Swedish. Now, according to an article in the Verge, it’s adding things like Maori, Tagalog, Haitian Creole, and isiZulu.

Jay Peters reports, “Duolingo is ‘more than doubling’ the number of courses it has available, a feat it says was only possible because it used generative AI to help create them in ‘less than a year.’

“The company [said] that it’s launching 148 new language courses. ‘This launch makes Duolingo’s seven most popular non-English languages – Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Mandarin – available to all 28 supported user interface (UI) languages,’ dramatically expanding learning options for over a billion potential learners worldwide’ … the company writes.

“Duolingo says that building one new course historically has taken ‘years,’ but the company was able to build this new suite of courses more quickly ‘through advances in generative AI, shared content systems, and internal tooling.’ The new approach is internally called ‘shared content,’ and the company says it allows employees to make a base course and quickly customize it. …

“ ‘Now, by using generative AI to create and validate content, we’re able to focus our expertise where it’s most impactful, ensuring every course meets Duolingo’s rigorous quality standards,’ Duolingo’s senior director of learning design, Jessie Becker, says in a statement.

“The announcement follows a recent memo sent by cofounder and CEO Luis von Ahn to staff saying that … it would ‘gradually stop using contractors to do work that AI can handle.’ AI use will now be evaluated during the hiring process and as part of performance reviews, and von Ahn says that ‘headcount will only be given if a team cannot automate more of their work.’

“Spokesperson Sam Dalsimer tells The Verge in response to questions sent following von Ahn’s memo. ‘We’ve already been moving in this direction, and it has been game-changing for our company. One of the best decisions we made recently was replacing a slow, manual content creation process with one powered by AI, under the direction of our learning design experts. That shift allowed us to create and launch 148 new language courses today.’ …

“Dalsimer acknowledges that there have been ‘negative reactions’ to von Ahn’s memo. Dalsimer also notes that Duolingo has ‘no intention to reduce full-time headcount or hiring’ and that ‘any changes to contractor staffing will be considered on a case-by-case basis.’ “

Hmm. That is giving me pause. But I do like the app and the way that for English-speaking students like me, Duolingo starts out with some vocabulary that sounds like English. It makes me wonder if it does the same for learners who come from other languages. That could be really tricky.

Have you used Duolingo? I know that blogger Asakiyume, a mega language learner, used Duolingo to add Spanish and Portuguese to what she already knew in Japanese and more obscure languages. One thing I know for sure: she won’t like that Duolingo contractors will lose jobs thanks to AI.

More at the Verge, here.

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Gaelic Boom at Duolingo

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 1, 2020| Leave a Comment »

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Photo: Duolingo
Duolingo’s popular Scottish Gaelic course launched just before St Andrew’s Day.

There’s an asylum seeker from Afghanistan I’ve been working with on English. Virtually, of course. She was already very good when we started in March, and she’s now applying to grad schools in the US. An English proficiency test is part of that process.

Imagine my surprise when I heard that the free online language program Duolingo — the one that I used for a while so as to understand Erik when he speaks to my half-Swedish grandchildren — is the designated online exam for two of the universities where my young friend is sending applications!

In the same way that the previously maligned Wikipedia gradually became a trusted source, Duolingo has risen to language program of choice.

And every year, it adds options. Scottish Gaelic, anyone?

Libby Brooks writes at the Guardian, “Almost double the number of people in Scotland who already speak Scottish Gaelic have signed up to learn the language on the popular free platform Duolingo in over a month, concluding a proliferation in courses, prizes and performance in Gaelic and Scots during 2019, as younger people in particular shrug off the cultural cringe’ associated with speaking indigenous languages.

“The Duolingo course, which was launched just before St Andrew’s Day on 30 November and looks likely to be the company’s fastest-growing course ever, has garnered more than 127,000 sign-ups – 80% from Scotland itself, compared with just over 58,000 people who reported themselves as Gaelic speakers in the 2011 Scottish census. …

“Says Sylvia Warnecke, a senior lecturer in languages at OU Scotland, … ‘In the academic world, the recognition of Scots as an important part of our linguistic and cultural landscape has existed for quite a while, but that’s not the case in other areas, like education, where Scots has always been considered “bad English,” or in popular culture, where it’s used to add humour.’

“Warnecke identifies a growing momentum, bolstered by the official recognition of the Scots language by the Scottish government and awareness of Scots as a language in its own right.

“Last year also featured the first Scots language awards, held in Glasgow in September, where the winner of the lifetime achievement award was the writer Sheena Blackhall, who was recently also named as the first Doric makar, or poet laureate.

“Doric, or north-east Scots, was forbidden in schools and dismissed as slang for decades, but is now a key part of Aberdeenshire council’s language strategy. The first language of the Sunset Song author Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Doric is taught in schools across the north-east. …

“Blackhall and Warnecke point to the impact of social media: at last year’s Edinburgh fringe, Twitter curated an exhibition celebrating the best of the #ScottishTwitter hashtag, which has become an online institution for those experimenting with the Scots language. …

“The range of written Scots has been transformed, says [Dr Michael Dempster, the director of the Scots Language Centre and Scots scriever at the National Library of Scotland], since the 70s and 80s, when writers would employ the language to portray a particular type of character. ‘That was an act of stereotype, while the narrative voice remained in standard English. Now people are writing in Scots throughout. They started picking it up from Irvine Welsh, although his writing was not in standard Scots, but now you have younger writers like Chris McQueer, who is consciously working in Scots and readers are really appreciative of that.’ …

“A team of Glasgow University researchers have been charting the richness and diversity of Scotland’s local dialects, launching their initial findings in the Scots Syntax Atlas last month.

“Encompassing ‘fit like’ of north-east Scotland, ‘gonnae no’ in Glasgow, and ‘I might can do’ from the Borders, the atlas offers a means of tracing the development of local speech patterns. For example, the influence of Irish immigration can be heard in Glaswegian Scots phrases such as ‘She’s after locking us out.’ ”

I have to say I love this sort of thing. And reading the article reminds me: I need Ian Rankin to come out with a new Scottish mystery soon. I want to know what ex-detective John Rebus is up to in retirement. And I need to hear those intriguing “Borders” phrases and the accent in my head.

Check out the Guardian article here.

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Trying to Learn Swedish

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on June 19, 2015| 6 Comments »

I thought I would like to learn some Swedish because my grandson is bilingual, and I’m sure his sister will be, too. I figured I could try reading their storybooks, and they could help me.

A co-worker told me about a free online language site called Duolingo. The first time I checked, it didn’t have Swedish, but it keeps adding languages. Now whenever I have little bits of time, I try to do an exercise.

My grandson thinks my pronunciation is pretty hilarious, but I do believe Duolingo is slowly moving me forward. The short lessons are lots of fun. They often include funny explanations of why Swedish has certain forms, and they always lob a few easy questions my way (especially after a series of mistakes) so I feel like I’m getting somewhere. You can click one button to have a voice say the words at a normal speed and another button to have her say it slo-ow. When a lesson is complete, trumpets sound.

John explained the company’s unusual business model to me. I get lessons for free because I am supplying Duolingo with data about the kinds of mistakes people make with language. Duolingo can sell the data to a search engine that wants to refine its guesses about what bad spellers and the like are really looking for.

Here’s a Tedx talk in which a charming 12-year-old boy says learned English in eight months just using his computer. He tells Matt Dalio, CEO and Chief of Product at Endless Mobile that he loves technology, especially creating animations.

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