I am Luis von Ahn, the creator of reCAPTCHA, those squiggly characters all over the web, and the co-founder and CEO of DUOLINGO! Duolingo has become the most popular way to learn languages online, for free, and has overtaken expensive and gimmicky...

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Why has there been such a delay in adding support for learning languages with non-roman characters, such as chinese/japanese?

Non-roman characters are hard for our system to handle, and also languages based on them are usually harder to teach! So we’ve concentrated on doing a good job with the other ones. We definitely want to cover all languages in the world, but with a small team it takes a while to get there.

In addition, are there any plans to do something with beta teams who stall, such as russian? e.g. refresh the teams?

Different teams work at different speeds. When a team stalls we try to do something about it. In the case of Russian we've been in good communication with them and we're confident they'll get a very high quality course out. The delay, among other things, is because we need to develop the right tools for them to be able to teach the alphabet well.

A while ago you guys said:

We're doing it internally to see what it's like to build Asian languages. There will be more Asian languages coming to the Incubator soon!

in reference to the English for Korean speakers course. Do you still work on it internally or is Korean -> English and the (hopefully upcoming) English -> Korean 100% a community effort now? Since Korean uses an alphabet, it can hopefully get a course made quicker than Japanese and Chinese.:)

Source for comment.

We worked internally on learning English from Korean. But now we're looking for volunteers to continue improving that course. Apply here!

What is the most important aspect of keeping projects like Duolingo free for all to use?

The whole point of having created Duolingo was to give everyone free, equal access to language education and removing barriers from the lives of people trying to better themselves. But we're not a non-profit, and believe in making this self-sustainable so it doesn't have to rely on donations to function.

Here's how we make money.

This doesn't seem to explain how you make money - it's an explanation of how Duolingo works.

Oops, I can explain more!. There are two parts to our revenue model. First, we make money by selling some of these translations to companies like CNN and Buzzfeed. So, for example, they write their news and English, and send it to us. We then give it to our students, who in order to practice their English skills, help translate this news to their native language. Then we give the translations back to e.g. CNN and they pay us for having translate them.

The second and most important part is our new app, the Duolingo Test Center. We’re now giving everyone the chance to prove that they have language skills without having to pay the $250 normally charged by the existing proficiency tests. Our tests will cost $20 (it’s free now, in Beta), and will help our educational app stay afloat.

How close are you guys to being profitable? Is the volume of content being translated big enough to cover a large chunk of your operating costs?

We're not yet profitable, but that's not our goal for now. We want to reach as many people as possible. I'm happy because there are now more people learning languages on Duolingo in the US than in the entire US public school system. There are also some countries where close to 4% of the Internet population is an active user of Duolingo!

Ooh, which are your top countries?

In terms of users? US, Brazil, Mexico, China.

In terms of penetration? Guatemala, Colombia, Costa Rica.

I've always wondered: how do you ensure the quality of these translations? Presumably you have multiple students translate the same article and use the consensus translation, but what about for sentences that are too difficult/variable and have no consensus?

Students vote on each others' translations. This works pretty well even for complex sentences. So far, CNN has been our client for more than a year and hasn't fired us :)

Is there a rough timeline for expanding the Duolingo Test Center to other languages?

~6 months.

Would you be interested in creating “Teacher accounts”, where teachers can get reports with useful data about their students learning activity and progress? Presuming that students voluntarily appoint someone with such a teacher account as actually their teacher with whom they want to share their progress data. Such a functionality is lacking now.

Teacher accounts could be paid by schools. This would provide Duolingo with new funding without violating the promise that learning languages on Duolingo is free and will remain free forever.

Yes. We are working on this.

So far we have stayed away from developing specifically for schools, because we think that companies that develop primarily for institutions have really crappy products -- it's almost an unstoppable effect: the institutions pay, and since they are not the end users they don't care tooo much about the user experience, so it makes more sense to hire really good sales people to sell them a shitty product. This explains Blackboard.

We will always develop for the student.

That said, we'll have some notion of a teacher account soon :)

I just wanted to say that the UI and UX designers you have are THE best! My question is why didn't you go with universal app for Windows?

Keep up the good work!

Thanks! Our designers are awesome.

For Windows, we decided to concentrate on phones and really nail that experience first. This is how we try to do everything: start with something small and make it good first.

Since you seem to be entrepreneurial and successful and everything, what are your best tips for other people to be creative and succeed at their goals and all that? I prefer practical advice, but I will also accept cheesy platitudes.

I get asked this a lot. The reason why people revert to cheesy platitudes is because it’s so hard to give practical advice on this, and real advice is kind of boring. Wouldn’t it be cool if I said “read Reddit every morning and fight one hundred horse-sized ducks - this is the secret.” My main advice is to find a problem that affects a very large number of people. Don’t listen to naysayers (my ideas usually sound crazy to most). That, and hard work… sometimes referred to as a maniacal obsession!

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What is the rough level of effort required of Duolingo staff to support one alpha course? One beta course? How has this level changed over time?

It's a few hours a week, because every language has its own peculiarities. For example we didn't know Hindi used "|" as a period...

Have you considered non-translation exercises? (E.g., "What is the month after May?" -> "June" for somebody learning English.)

We have. We may do this.

What language do you personally most want to have in Duolingo?

Of the ones we don't have? Japanese. The question is when that's coming out... It won't be quick, unfortunately. It's impossible to be great at everything, and we're moving at a pace that allows us to only offer high quality courses.

I've been waiting patiently for Japanese! I can't wait. I love your service, it's been a blast going back and relearning German.

nothing to ask, just wanted to say thanks and keep working on Japanese support! I'd love to watch Kurosawa films without subtitles.

Thank you fine sir or madam.

First off, it's great to see a first party official app in the Windows Phone store. Thank you for doing it.

What was the decision process that lead to making an official Duolingo app for Windows Phone? Was it just pressure from people asking for it? Or does Duolingo see a real upturn in the Windows Phone market and decided now was the time to do it?

Also, it's probably way too soon to know, but how well is Duolingo doing in the WP store? Any stats you can share, that may help convince others that it's worth investing in Windows Phone, if not not can those stats be shared in the future?

What was the decision process that lead to making an official Duolingo app for Windows Phone? Was it just pressure from people asking for it? Or does Duolingo see a real upturn in the Windows Phone market and decided now was the time to do it?

It was mainly people asking for it. We got thousands of requests. Then we looked into market shares and found that WP is big in some of the same countries that Duolingo is doing well in (Mexico, Colombia, Italy, etc.). So we took the plunge :)

Also, it's probably way too soon to know, but how well is Duolingo doing in the WP store? Any stats you can share, that may help convince others that it's worth investing in Windows Phone, if not not can those stats be shared in the future?

It's too soon to tell. But I'm quite hopeful actually. Microsoft has been great to work with.

One of the most requested languages on Duolingo, especially according to the informal poll that was recently done, is Norwegian. Multiple people have said here and on the Duo forums that they have applied to start the course in the Incubator, but have not heard back. Is there a reason for this?

None other than us not wanting to add many more courses until we improve the current ones. It’s always hard to balance the requests for new languages (we get literally thousands every day), and the desire to offer a high quality experience. We’re thankful to the applicants and will notify them as soon as we have the bandwidth to work on new courses.

So you can confirm that it isn't an anti-Norwegian conspiracy because a møøse bit your sister once? I only ask for my good friend Horst Nordfink.

I can neither confirm nor deny this.

As an applicant to the Incubator, this is nice to hear. I hope to be able to give the gift of learning a language some day !

Thank you. This makes me feel really good.

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Mo Lingots, mo problems! Just kidding. :) Yes, we do want to add more bonus skills and cool items.

Hello Luis!

Do you know what happens when languages in the incubator are created but seem to never start development (example: Romanian for English, Polish for English)?

They become sad. We become sad. It's just sad.

What is your favorite cheese?

Swiss.

That’s a very broad classification

I like my cheese neutral.

And full of places to hide looted treasure? I kid...I kid...but seriously, we're all looking at you Switzerland.

My co-founder Severin is Swiss. He has an army knife and likes fondue. His last name is Hacker.

"Duolingo test center" is a brilliant and innovative idea (like Duolingo) ! Are there other fields that you would like to disrupt with your service ?

All of education! It's really quite a broken system. It's inefficient, unfair, and ineffective.

Is reCAPTCHA actually useful still? It seems like it's primary function now is to work as a captcha instead of transcribe words.

It belongs to Google and I don't work on it anymore. But I'm pretty sure it is. They're also using it to recognize house numbers from Google maps.

How many languages do you speak? Also duolingo almost makes me forgive you for captcha!

Why, thank you! That is very kind. :) I speak 2.5 languages: I'm a native Spanish speaker, also speak English (I hope) and have learned Portuguese decently on Duolingo. I don't speak body language or woman.

Can you add woman to Duolingo? I think a greater part of the world population of men would be grateful!

Either you speak it or you don't. Woman can't be taught.

I fear this. The ladies in my life say this to me often :(

Oooh...I'll apply to be a developer for that language. I'm fluent in woman.

Source: I am woman, hear me roar.

Can you teach me?

I would hope that reCaptcha would be worth forgiveness!

No, because I rarely am able to read them, and that makes me panic on a bad day!

Are you sure you are human?

Nope.

There you go.

Why doesn't duolinguo do adaptive retesting of problem material (for example if someone has trouble with future tense, future tense questions show up more often)? has your research shown it doesn't work?

Oh we do fo sho! Duolingo has a model of everything that you know, and how well you know it, and it uses that model to choose the next exercise to give you. That said, we're working on making this way more personalized and adaptive. Our goal is to be as good as a 1:1 tutor!

Hi and thanks for doing this.

After using Duolingo for a while, I have to admit that some of the sentences are pretty goofy sounding. Is this done to keep Duolingo from being too formal and stiff, or was this merely a coincidence?

We have a French guy named Rémy who makes funny sentences. He's funny.

You should also check out @ShitDuoSays for the funniest of these.

First I want to say Duolingo is the BEST!

1. How do you select the moderators for a specific course? How do you know if they really know that language, for example, Klingon, if you don't know anyone who speaks that language? How do you know if they are qualified to contribute?

2. A lot of non-English/Spanish/... speakers (Those who only have English) are begging for new languages on their discussions. Something cough for Dutch cough speakers cough cough...

3. Are there any of your close-future plans you want to share with us?

4. Do you have any communication with the Romanian, Russian (and Polish, but I saw a new contributor was added yesterday!) for English teams? Maybe consider to add contributors!

5. Why did Ukrainian get their reverse course so fast, compared with the other courses? Not that I'm not happy with it, but Greek, Indonesian, and maybe Vietnamese are possible too with the current system.

6. What happend to the teams feature?

7. Are tips and notes coming to the apps?

8. Am I doing illegal stuff if I use immersion? (I live in the EU)

Thanks for reading (and answering :p)!

First I want to say Duolingo is the BEST!

Thank you!

How do you select the moderators for a specific course? How do you know if they really know that language, for example, Klingon, if you don't know anyone who speaks that language? How do you know if they are qualified to contribute?

We always find somebody else who knows both languages to review the applications. This is key!

A lot of non-English/Spanish/... speakers (Those who only have English) are begging for new languages on their discussions. Something cough for Dutch cough speakers cough cough...

Yeah we should add those. Writing this down...

Are there any of your close-future plans you want to share with us?

We just launched two apps today (see my original post). Our immediate plan is to celebrate :)

Do you have any communication with the Romanian, Russian (and Polish, but I saw a new contributor was added yesterday!) for English teams? Maybe consider to add contributors!

Yes, we're in close contact with all the teams.

Why did Ukrainian get their reverse course so fast, compared with the other courses? Not that I'm not happy with it, but Greek, Indonesian, and maybe Vietnamese are possible too with the current system.

Ukranian is ebing developed by the Peace Corps, so they move a bit faster :)

What happend to the teams feature?

Yeah... it was not very good so we scrapped it. We're working on a replacement.

Are tips and notes coming to the apps?

Maybe :)

Am I doing illegal stuff if I use immersion? (I live in the EU) Thanks for reading (and answering :p)!

Ugh. I don't know, tbh.

Are there any plans to offer advanced trees for the languages, allowing users who have already completed a tree to do some more advanced work? Thanks, by the way, for starting Duolingo. I use it everyday, and I'm learning nine languages on it concurrently, and I love the heck out of it. Thanks!

Yes, we will expand on the course content we have. And not just with longer trees -- also with new teaching features.

Hello, I'm Guatemalan and I'm starting a startup (Tikonb'al) dedicated to training developers in Guatemala, we teach programming to young people with low incomes and improve their living conditions, we still have many needs to fill and one of them is to teach English to our students. I want to know whether we can use Duolingo to teach English?

Yes! Absolutely. We are proud to say that the ministry of education in Guatemala has reached out to us to use Duolingo to teach English and to use the Duolingo Test Center to measure English skills, and it’s an honor to collaborate with them.

Everyone can use Duolingo - the idea is that it is free and available to all.

When do you anticipate the first non-european languages will be available to learn for english speakers in Duolingo?

Does Esperanto count as non-European?

Does this mean Esperanto will be available on Duolingo in the future?

Yes!

I hate captchas, because they are in some cases illegible for humans too and I don't know how often I have clicked the reload button an reCaptcha.

But now for the question...

Was the development of the first captcha a research goal or was it, like it seems to happen in academia, a byproduct of some other research?

It was a research goal in itself. The chief scientist of Yahoo! at the time, Udi Manber, told a few of us about a problem Yahoo! was having with bots making accounts, so we started thinking about how to solve that problem. And then CAPTCHA came out of that. Sorry!

Hey Luis, I am a big fan of everything you've made...You come from a Country that has many brilliant minds but great inequality and very little support for education overall. How can technology aid in improving the situation for underdeveloped countries like yours?

This has been the motivation for my work - to help improve the education for people in developing and underdeveloped countries like mine.

The costs associated with education in many countries around the world make it so that instead of it being an equalizer, education allows the rich to continue growing but stifles the poor, who rarely make it to college. It is also extremely ineffective: people spend 12 years learning math and most can barely add fractions somehow! Technology now allows us to make education measurably more effective and find ways to heavily reduce costs so that everyone can have equal access. Also, it turns out that more people have access to mobiles phones in the world than to public toilets! So mobile technology helps us bring education to the hands and pockets of those who would otherwise not have access.

Hi, Luis! How would you describe the core teaching philosophy at Duolingo? There's a lot of debate in the discussions about whether Duo tries to teach through immersion and whether or not it's designed to teach you in the way a child would learn. (I know where I stand on this, but I'd love to hear your authoritative viewpoint.)

Hi! There are many different philosophies on how to teach, but most of them have little to no data backing them. When we started working on Duolingo we read some books on how to best teach a language, and we pretty quickly realized they contradicted each other! (It felt a lot like books on diets).

Now, with Duolingo, we actually have access to a data pool of, say, 100,000 users to compare with another 100,000 users whenever we wonder if teaching X before Y, or Y before X is better. Everything on Duolingo is measured this way, including the number of tears that our mascot Owl, Duo, cries when you fail a lesson.

So we're not based on philosophies as much as in data.

The other point to consider is that people learn best when they’re interested and engaged. Making Duolingo like a game, and teaching in a way that allows it to feel like a game, was crucial to keeping everyone coming back on a regular basis, which is essential for learning a language.

In the future, will the Duolingo team ever consider adding languages that are extinct (dead, if you will) or are going extinct (or more, going out of use)? What I mean by this are languages like: Cherokee, Latin, Catalan, Occitan

Yes, we’d like to be able to teach every language in existence, including fictional ones! But we also really worry about the quality of our courses, so we’re adding new languages at a pace that allows us to make sure a course is great before it becomes available. For now, we’re focusing on more popular languages, but this is definitely one of our goals.

So I guess we'll have to hold off on Dothraki.

They also got them intellectual property restrictions on this one...

When do you expect to add ancient languages, specifically Latin and Ancient Greek? I know there is much demand for Latin.

We will do it eventually, but I don't think it will be within the next 4 months.

Hi Luis! I was wondering where you'd like Duolingo to be, in say, 2 years?

Our mission is to develop the best education and make it available to all. Hard to say what this means in 2 years because we’re a startup, which means we probably created and destroyed 5 different plans while you were typing up this question.

Roughly, I’d like us to have reached 100 million active users, to have substituted existing English certification tests like the TOEFL, and to have created an educational model for teaching languages that is much more effective than a classroom. Maybe we’ll have ventured out into teaching other things… we’ll see!

What is happening with the teams feature? Is it not going to happen anymore?

Not soon. We scrapped it and started over :( It was sad.

When will you add Chinese? 1 month? 1 year? 2?

1 decade.

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Hi yourself! Thank you so much, I’ll share the message. :) Yes, this is certainly an ambition of our team's: there are currently 1 billion adults in the world who can’t read or write. The current educational system is failing the majority of people and I want to help fix this. With our new mission to develop the best possible education (of any kind) and make it universally available, we do think that we'll expand out of languages. However, for now we really want to nail what we’re doing and that requires focusing completely on teaching languages. Soooo, we don’t have a concrete date in terms of when we may be expanding.

And will you find a way to win many teaching people to read? If you did, you'd be a God, ok no. But wouldn't you need more people working with you to make all those learning apps?

Yes, and we're hiring!

how do you think you can make Duolingo even better?

Hi Jesse. We a/b test everything on Duolingo, so that every day it gets better and better. Last year, a study conducted by the City University of New York (CUNY) showed that 34 hours of Duolingo are equivalent to a whole university semester of language learning. Now, we want to offer education that is as effective as a personal tutor. To do that, we’re using what we call “machine learning” to make the experience more adaptive, meaning each lesson will be more tailored to each user depending on their needs, as identified by Duolingo through their progress.

Wow, you are the hardest working CEO in showbiz. How many AMAs does this make for you?

3!

Hola que tal Luis, me encanta DuoLingo, lo uso para aprender italiano y alemán.

Do you do much advertising or draw users from Latin America? (Actually, do you do any advertising or is it all word of mouth?) When I read the DuoLingo discussions or here on reddit, most users seem to hail from the U.S. and Europe. I'm curious how many users come from other areas of the world.

Is there a specific market that you think could benefit most from knowledge of/access to Duo? I'm thinking specifically of my in-laws in Mexico City who are all taking (poor quality and expensive) English classes in high school and are becoming very connected online through internet cafes and personal devices, but I'm just curious about any thoughts you have on the matter.

¡Hola! We don’t do any advertising at all because we believe all our funding should go toward making the best possible product. As such, we rely on word of mouth and interested journalists. :)

Here on Reddit most people do seem to come from the US or Europe, but there is a huge Latin American community on Duolingo - in fact it is bigger than our US community. Mexico is our 3rd largest country, and the idea behind Duolingo was originally to help people in countries like mine who could really benefit from learning English but just couldn’t afford it.

Right now we’re in touch with the governments of Costa Rica, Guatemala and Colombia to help spread English education with Duolingo, and we are very interested in continuing our growth in Mexico.

Thank you for helping me learn German. I always wanted to learn another language but my public schooling made it difficult. We never got past Spanish verbs. Duolinguo gave me the tools, -> FOR FREE <-, to learn another language. Thank you, again.

Do you have any plans to develop language learning tools for pre-existing platforms (thinking LeapFrog tablets and the like) that are geared specifically towards children?

Thank you for helping me learn German. I always wanted to learn another language but my public schooling made it difficult. We never got past Spanish verbs. Duolinguo gave me the tools, -> FOR FREE <-, to learn another language. Thank you, again.

Thank you!!

Do you have any plans to develop language learning tools for pre-existing platforms (thinking LeapFrog tablets and the like) that are geared specifically towards children?

We get contacted by a lot of different platforms, but it's hard for us to commit to any of them because most don't have the type of reach we're looking for.

You mentioned in a TED talk that Duo would seek revenue by marketing crowdsourced translations to companies. How have companies responded to this idea so far, and is it as viable (or more viable) than you expected? Have you had to adjust your business plan accordingly?

Yes it is viable, and CNN and Buzzfeed are currently our clients. We translate their content into Spanish, French and Portuguese! However, we don’t want to become a translations company - education is our core. As such, we’re now also focusing on the Test Center which allows people to prove their language skills without shelling out US $250, from home, on a mobile device or computer. Each certified test will cost $US 20 and the idea is that we can make revenue while removing a huge barrier from the lives of students and job seekers.

How do you prefer tamales? Negros or colorados?

Colorados for sure.

Thanks for taking the time to do this AMA.

I was wondering what kind of outreach Duolingo has done. I know that it is very popular, but I was wondering if you have done other outreach in other countries, or if you have relied most on word of mouth.

I would also like to know the same with regards to the English proficiency tests. Current tests, both for English and other languages, are hard to schedule and often cost upwards of $100, which is a lot even for middle class people, so the test center is obviously a welcome addition to the market. But what groups currently accept or plan to accept it? Is Duolingo working on getting them accepted, and will other language proficiency tests be available in the future?

I am very excited to see the proficiency tests take off, since I am a Spanish learner. Though I want to prove my fluency, the DELE (similar to TOEFL) is $200 and I just can't afford the cost of the test and travel. Hopefully though Duolingo's tests will achieve a similar level of prestige and acceptance.

Thank you again for this AMA and for an amazing product.

We rely mainly on word of mouth and the interest of reporters around the world! Our belief is that for as long as we can, we should focus our funds on making the best possible products rather than spending them on advertising.

We are in conversations with 12 of the top universities in the US. These are very interested in accepting the Test Center because the TOEFL is not only unfair, it also leads to a lot of cheating and fraud, while restricting applicant pools.

We will add other languages soon. Spanish is next!

Thank you so much for your answer and thank you once again for a great product!

:)

I just was to say thank you, through Duolingo I have fallen back in love with learning languages after school put me off it. What made you focus on language learning after CAPTCHA?

After selling my second company to Google, I was at a very fortunate situation. Therefore, I wanted to dedicate my time and efforts towards something that could help a large number of people. I’ve always been interested in education - I'm a professor at Carnegie Mellon - and wanted to do something that would allow everyone to learn in an effective way regardless of their financial background. In particular, it was my country that motivated me to do this, since most of the population does not have access to good education.

What are the next projects after the current ones for you, Luis?

I don’t know! I try to focus 100% on what I’m doing, and right now my entire focus is on Duolingo. There’s still a lot to be done here - originally we wanted to offer free language education to everyone, but now our mission is to develop the best possible education of any kind and make it universally available. We may start teaching basic literacy soon. There are a billion adults in the world that don’t know how to read and write, and I think that’s crazy!

Where (geographically) do you think Duolingo will be most successful? Are you planning on targeting certain regions or countries?

The countries where we’re most popular include the US, Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Hungary, the UK, China and Italy. So it really varies! Our core goal is to reach people whose lives can really be improved by learning a language, but might not have been able to afford it. Often this means developing countries, but where people are able to get online.

Hey Luis!

Thanks for everything you did!

My question is, what would you recommend to a 16 y.o young entrepreneur, mostly interested in tech industry?

Thanks!

Make something. Just do it.

What's Duolingo's revenue model?

As I'm typing this I'm in the middle of a Duolingo lesson, and I'm hoping you guys can afford to continue to teach me for free. Also, if you charged me for the Duolingo for Windows Phone app, I'd have gladly bought it.

Hi Ryan! We never want to charge our users - on any platform. And yes, we plan on staying afloat so everyone can continue learning for free. We currently have two models. The first is that on the website, our users have the opportunity to translate texts (in the “immersion” section) to practice their language skills, and these come from real sites like CNN that pay us for translations! This sounds crazy but works because people collaborate on translations until they look good. The second and most important part is our new app, the Duolingo Test Center. We’re now giving everyone the chance to prove that they have language skills without having to pay the $250 normally charged by the existing proficiency tests. Our tests will cost $20 (it’s free now, in Beta), and will help our educational app stay afloat.

What was the reasoning behind you deciding to deny a Windows Phone app developing, then.releasing it? Was it so no one asked about the progress, etc.?

Yes, we got a lot of requests and people asking us when it was going to be ready, etc.