Duolingo is a language learning app and quite simple to use. After choosing which language you want to learn, you’re presented with about 100 skill sets divided by script or grammar (grocery shopping, futures, and so on). Each level is structured like the branches of a tree, and when you complete one, you move down the tree earning gems to “spend” on the app or hearts you need to perform the exercises. Make a mistake and you have to fix it before moving on. It’s all fun and games until you make too many mistakes, run out of hearts and lose your progress. Then you’ll deal with Duolingo’s mascot, an official green owl named Duo, who, if you’re anything like me, will ultimately define your self-esteem. Duo’s face is the first thing I see every day and increasingly, the last. Like Tinder, Duolingo launched 10 years ago. But while Tinder took off immediately, Duolingo’s success was more gradual. According to a spokesperson, 14.9 million people now log in daily, over 50% more than in 2021. The last big spike was when the Squid Game came out and everyone decided to learn Korean. Before that, it was French, when Call My Agent! aired on Netflix. Of course, there was the pandemic, when 30 million users worldwide downloaded it during the first weeks of the lockdown. I was one of them. Faced with the prospect of going nowhere soon, it was the closest thing I could find to a way out. Plus, it was productive and free. “The last big spike was when the Squid Game came out and everyone decided to learn Korean.” Photo: Zuma Press, Inc./Alamy The most popular language is English. But for those who are already English speakers, the app has 41 full languages – Spanish and French are the most popular – with the additional options of High Valyrian (from Game of Thrones) and Klingon (Star Trek), though not, surprisingly, Filipino or Bulgarian. It’s not exactly a benchmark for international relations, although the number of users learning Ukrainian through the app increased by 1,171% this spring (Duolingo declined to provide comparable figures for Russian). I started with Italian because I lived in Italy so I already spoke it pretty well. I wasn’t fluent, but I was good enough to teach English to Fiat executives while living in Turin, make real friendships, and occasionally date. That pandemic summer, I kept it up for a few months, then, like most people (Reddit estimates it takes three to six months to complete a course), lost interest and deleted it. It wasn’t until last July, while re-watching The Godfather, that I realized the Sicilian dialogue was going over my head. So, for the first time in almost two years, I downloaded Duolingo again. After a few weeks, my Italian was progressing well. Of course there was no way of knowing, but lying in the bath at night I imagined I was wandering the Rialto in Venice buying tomatoes. I could praise their smell, haggle, and if the seller tried to rip me off, say “ma dai!” (Oh come on!) while shaking my fist. I quickly moved on without mistakes and started practicing out loud, telling my son that while “Africa is not a country” (L’Africa non è un paese), at least “I could buy fish from the supermarket tomorrow” (domani potrei comprare il pesce al supermercato). Thrilled with my progress, I added French (I want to improve my AS level before I go on holiday with the in-laws). Why stop there though, I thought, adding Portuguese (friends had just moved there and I wanted to feel connected to them) and even Latin (I’m a slob for derivatives!). Soon I was pinballing between the four. I loved how simple it was, that I could quantify my progress in terms of points and also brag about it by sharing updates with other users. If this sounds like both a video game and a learning tool, that’s because it is. I asked Emma Clark, an Islamic garden designer fluent in Arabic, to go. “It’s good if you like playing video games more than learning languages” was her digression, leaving me to wonder if I’d be more interested in success than sunbeds. You quickly learn to hack it and try to pass as many lessons as you can for Chris Boyd points Ask any Duolinguist and they’ll tell you competition is central – a French-learning friend described it as “toxic magic”. That can be a good thing, says Dr. Cindy Blanco, Duolingo’s managing editor of educational content. “I taught Spanish at university in the US and in class you could get them to do difficult things because of the social pressure to sit down and do it. When you’re learning with an app, if you feel confused, there’s no pressure to progress – unless there’s an element of competition.” Blanco describes it as healthy, but I beg to differ. Users speak ill of maintaining rows at high cost. A friend, who wished to remain anonymous, admitted that not only did she repeat exercises to maintain her 213-day streak in Spanish, but, at times, she used Google Translate. Chris Boyd, 38, who works in film, spent several years learning Russian on the app and could be described as a Duolingo survivor. Boyd became interested in Russian culture after his father left books about the Cold War around the house. This led to an interest in Russian cinema, but it was a trip to Moscow that prompted him to actively learn. “I was struck by how beautiful the language is – somehow it’s both delicate and cheerful at the same time,” she says. After taking a course at Pushkin House in London, he first used Duolingo as a kind of supplement. But it didn’t take long. “You quickly learn to hack it and try to get through as many lessons as you can for the points, rather than having the words and phrases stuck in your brain for more than a few hours,” he says. He also hates the owl (I recently came across a Medium post called “Duolingo needs to loosen up” based on its aggressive use of notifications). The real question is whether it really works and how fast. In an article for the Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates, who learned French as an adult, noted the “symmetry in language ads that promise fluency in three weeks and weight loss ads that promise a new body in about the same days.” For me, learning Italian on Duolingo is like applying WD-40 to my bike. it just keeps the wheels turning. French was also easy because I had a solid foundation. But a month of Portuguese has already made me wonder how multilingual I really am, despite the fact that these languages are supposed to be linked by “lexical similarity”. How quickly you learn varies greatly, although there is a sweet spot. A friend of mine told me that it wasn’t until week six that she felt something click (she’s approaching one year of learning Italian). However, as any linguist will tell you, there is an element of nuance that an app cannot provide. “In the end, using a language is a social thing, not a game,” says Francis Jones, professor of translation studies at Newcastle University. Jones speaks five languages confidently, but can converse in about 20. He tried learning Swedish on Duolingo, but found the vocabulary too random to be of much use (there’s a fun Twitter account called @shitduosays that compiles the best) . He also completed five levels of Chinese “but couldn’t hold a conversation,” he says. “His mission, which he’s very good at, is to show you how to memorize words, pronounce them and read and recognize specific vocabulary. Unfortunately, you can’t always transplant it just like that.” I’m a fool for derivatives! … Morwenna Ferrier. Photo: Linda Nylind/The Guardian Jones’ second language is Dutch, which he learned while living in the Netherlands in the late 1970s. “This is the ideal environment, the language comes at you from all sides,” he says. “But more than that, I needed to earn a living and then, well, I met my wife. Motivation is vital,” he says. I learned Italian because I had planned a romantic future for myself, but when I arrived, I also needed to eat. It’s all about how you like to learn. I’m terrible at grammar because I don’t care about nuts and I mostly learned Italian by imitating my roommates. I was said to speak Italian with a northern/Milanese accent and swear in Venetian. For someone like me, Duolingo is ideal. Jones, who generously calls my approach “holistic” or “top-down” because I mime the phrase, memorize it, and only then break the phrase down into words, prefers to work from the bottom up: “I’m analytical . I like to know the bones, the nuts and bolts, but then you go out, you use it.” This is how she became fluent in Dutch in about three months and why I probably never will. I didn’t learn Italian to become a linguist. I loved what I was in Italy and when I’m away for a long time, I get nostalgic for it. Knowing another language is like a superpower. To speak a new language, Jones says, “one has to change into a new personality, like trying on a new set of clothes.” As for learning it in an app, I suspect Duolingo’s limitations will see me through. As Boyd says: “There’s nothing that can really replace the feeling of sitting in front of another human being and trying to communicate with them.”
