In mid-December, Apple named Duolingo—a piece of[let’s stet] language-learning software—its 2013 iPhone app of the year. Since then, I swear every native English speaker of my acquaintance has suddenly begun guten tag-ing, buongiorno-ing, and comment ça va-ing. I myself have been habla-ing Español for the past three weeks, with Duolingo as my guide. Verdict so far? ¡Excelente, mis amigos! [good]Until we genetically engineer the Babel fish that Douglas Adams envisioned in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Duolingo may be our best bet for a global uptick in inter-lingual understanding. The app currently teaches Spanish, French, Italian, German, and Portuguese to English speakers, and teaches English to speakers of those languages plus Dutch, Russian, Hungarian, and Turkish, with more on the way.
Reported by Slate 57 minutes ago.
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