Duolingo, the world’s #1 language learning platform has some exciting news for the Philippines! This March, the world’s most downloaded educational app is launching an English course specifically designed for Tagalog speakers!
Tagalog, the language of one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world, is derived from the endonym taga-ilog ("river dweller"), composed of tagá- ("native of" or "from") and ilog ("river"). It is spoken by more than half of the Philippine’s population.
Duolingo’s English for the Tagalog Speakers Course is designed with the beginner English speaking Filipino in mind. It aims to make learning basic English fun and easy, it includes words and situations that will be useful for the learner. Interesting vocabularies such as expressions of hunger, emotions and activities that are popular in the Philippines–all make for good basic conversational English.
The course is a representation of Duolingo’s founder story. Luis von Ahn, Duolingo’s CEO and founder was born in Guatemala. He realized that education sometimes brought inequality across socio-economic classes. People who have money can buy themselves the best education in the world. People who don’t have very much money barely learn how to read and write. Realizing language is important for personal growth and career development, Luis created Duolingo and aims to make it universally accessible. Now Duolingo is used by people across the economic spectrum, from celebrities like Bill Gates, to refugees.
Similarly, not every family in the Philippines is lucky enough to get well educated. With the English for the Tagalog Speakers Course, Duolingo expands its mission to the Philippines–that is providing free and accessible education to everyone in the world.
With more than 500 million downloads and growing daily, Duolingo is the most popular & fun way to learn a language worldwide. Duolingo shares the fun in learning, as it can be used anytime, anywhere, through gamification–goal-setting and collecting XP points, playful interface and fun elements at play.
Duolingo is well acknowledged in the US, UK, and many other countries. The App has been awarded for “free iPhone App of the Year” soon after it’s launched and has continuous high accolades from Apple and Google. The company has been nominated for Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Companies”, CNBC’s Disruptor 50, Fortune’s “Change the World” list , among others.
Beyond English, Duolingo offers over 100 total courses across 41 distinct languages, from Spanish, French, German and Japanese to Navajo and Yiddish. Those whose English proficiency is good can pick up the diversified languages from English.
According to Haina Xiang, Marketing Director of Duolingo, Currently, 20% of Filipinos on Duolingo are learning Japanese, 19% are learning Korean, and 16% are learning Spanish. “We are amazed by the Filipinos’ diversity of learning passion. We want to share the fun and make language learning more accessible for Filipinos.”