Duolingo
 |
|
| Available in |
Multilingual
|
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Pittsburgh, US |
| Area served | World European Union (restricted) |
| Founder(s) | Luis von Ahn, Severin Hacker |
| CEO | Luis von Ahn |
| Industry | Online education, Professional certification, Translation, Crowdsourcing |
| Services | Language courses, Duolingo Test Center, Duolingo for Schools |
| Employees | 60 |
| Slogan(s) | Free language education for the world |
| Website | www |
| Alexa rank |
 856 (February 2017[update]) |
| Advertising | yes |
| Registration | yes |
| Users | 120 million |
| Launched | 30 November 2011 |
| Current status | Online |
| Native client(s) on | Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Windows 10 Mobile |
| Written in | Scala |
Duolingo (/ˌdjuːoʊˈlɪŋɡoʊ/ DEW-oh-LING-goh) is a free language-learning platform that includes a language-learning website and app, as well as a digital language proficiency assessment exam. Duolingo offers all its language courses free of charge. As of November 2016, the language-learning website and app offer 68 different language courses across 23 languages; with 22 additional courses in development. The app is available on iOS, Android and Windows 8 and 10 platforms with about 150 million registered users across the world.
The project was started at the end of 2009 in Pittsburgh by Carnegie Mellon University professor Luis von Ahn (creator of reCAPTCHA) and his graduate student Severin Hacker, and then developed along with Antonio Navas, Vicki Cheung, Marcel Uekermann, Brendan Meeder, Hector Villafuerte, and Jose Fuentes.
Inspiration for Duolingo came from two places. Luis Von Ahn wanted to create another program that served two purposes in one, what he calls a "twofer". Duolingo does this by teaching its users a foreign language while having them translate simple phrases in documents.
Forbes' staff member Parmy Olson revealed the other incentive towards creating Duolingo. Von Ahn was born in Guatemala and saw how expensive it was for people in his community to learn English. Severin Hacker (born in Zug, Switzerland), co-founder of Duolingo, and Von Ahn believe that “free education will really change the world” and wanted to supply the people an outlet to do so.
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