But does the language learning app, which has almost 15 million people using it, really work? I usually spend between 10 and 20 minutes on it while the kettle boils or I load CBeebies or write some emails. It used to be eBay. Then Wordle. Duolingo is a language learning app and pretty simple to use. Make a mistake, and you must correct it before moving on. Like Tinder, Duolingo launched 10 years ago. According to a spokesperson, The last big spike was when Squid Game was released and everyone decided to learn Korean.
Before that, it was French, when Call My Agent! Of course, there was the pandemic, when 30 million users worldwide downloaded it during the first few weeks of lockdown.
I was one of them. Confronted with the prospect of going absolutely nowhere anytime soon it was the closest thing I could find to a way out. Plus, it was productive and free. The most popular language is English. But for those who are already English-speakers, the app has 41 complete languages β Spanish and French are the most popular β with the added options of High Valyrian from Game of Thrones and Klingon Star Trek , though not, oddly, Filipino or Bulgarian.
I started with Italian because I used to live in Italy so I already spoke it pretty well. That pandemic summer, I kept it up for a few months, then, like most people Reddit estimates it takes three to six months to finish a course , I lost interest and deleted it. So for the first time in almost two years, I downloaded Duolingo again. A few weeks in, my Italian was progressing nicely. Of course there was no way of knowing, but lying in the bath at night I imagined I was wandering through the Rialto in Venice buying tomatoes.
Buoyed up by my progress, I added French I want to brush up on my AS level before going on holiday with the in-laws. Soon I was pinballing between all four. I liked how simple it was, that I could quantify my progress in terms of points and, moreover, brag about it by sharing updates with fellow users. I asked Emma Clark, an Islamic-garden designer with a robust working knowledge of Arabic, to have a go. Users talk bleakly of keeping up streaks at great cost. One friend, who wished to remain anonymous, admitted to not only repeating exercises in order to maintain her now day streak of Spanish, but, on occasion, using Google Translate.
