Duolingo launches five new endangered language courses

The new courses, which will be rolled out over the next year, were revealed by company founder Luis Von Ahn during Duocon, an annual language learning event first held in London in 2019.

The five will join the more than 40 languages ​​and 100 courses currently available on the app.

“Language is the connection and the coming together of people and cultures. What better way to maintain the vitality of living cultures than by making languages ​​accessible to all? Said Myra Awodey, Senior Community Manager at Duolingo.

“What better way to preserve the dynamism of cultures than by making languages ​​accessible to all? “

“I can’t wait to learn Xhosa, our first language that incorporates clicks. “

New languages ​​were revealed alongside new updates and changes to the app, including Duolingo World, which will use machine learning to create text-to-speech voices for characters, and updates from Birdbrain. AI, the application’s personalized learning system, which will have new features to generate the level of difficulty of the courses.

Other new courses currently in the incubation phase on the Duolingo site include two Mayan languages, K’iche ‘(spoken in Guatemala) and Yucatec (spoken in Belize and Mexico) for Spanish speakers, Cantonese for Mandarin speakers and Tamil for English speakers.

A Yiddish course was also released for English speakers earlier this year.