Duolingo remains one of the most popular language-learning apps and has been adding new languages, including some that linguists fear may eventually disappear.
Read more: Why is everything so expensive in Brazil? see the reasons
see more
Alert: THIS poisonous plant landed a young man in the hospital
Google develops AI tool to help journalists in…
This time, the foreign language learning app announced five new language courses: Zulu, Xhosa, Maori, Haitian Creole and Austronesian Tagalog.
The five courses will join the more than 40 languages and 100 courses currently available in the app.
The new languages were revealed along with new app updates and changes, including Duolingo World, which will use machine learning to create text-to-speech voices for characters, and updates to Birdbrain THERE.
The application's personalized learning system, which will have new features to generate the difficulty level of the classes.
Founded in 2011, Duolingo offers courses in 40 languages, including Spanish and Catalan. In addition, the application has about 40 million active users per month, according to company data.
New to Duolingo: Unique character voices
The language app has developed a text-to-speech tool to give the characters that illustrate your lessons a unique voice.
Speech recognition and text-to-speech technology has long been the foundation of Duolingo's teaching method; but the voices didn't have much personality, focusing more on diction.
Now, the company has set up a team to create more memorable and distinctive voices for your characters animated.
The custom voices took several months to create, encompassing not just programming an algorithm, but also people's voices to use as the character's voice.
Language learning in the pandemic
The closure of schools and institutes around the world due to the coronavirus pandemic has given a boost to the educational technology sector and Duolingo is proof of that.
Duolingo, like many other companies, has seen a significant increase in new users and revenue since the start of the pandemic.
So, as an example, Duolingo ended 2019 with 27.3 million monthly active users; in 2020 with 36.7 million, which translates into an increase of 34%. Therefore, in the first quarter of 2021 alone, there was an increase from 33.5 million to 39.9 million, about 19% more.