Duolingo - Learn languages for free

Learn diverse languages using the most popular education mobile application worldwide! Duolingo offers enjoyable, cost-free lessons in 40+ languages through concise, interactive exercises that enhance your vocabulary and grammar skills in speaking, reading, listening, and writing. Crafted by linguistic specialists and highly praised by millions of learners globally, Duolingo equips you to engage in real dialogues in languages like Spanish, French, Chinese, Italian, German, English, and more.

Why Choose Duolingo?

• Engaging and Efficient: Develop strong language abilities with game-style lessons and delightful characters.

• Proven Results: Backed by a scientific teaching approach, Duolingo ensures enduring language retention.

• Progress Monitoring: Stay on course to reach your language goals, unlocking rewards and accomplishments with consistent practice.

• Massive Community: Connect with over 300 million learners, finding motivation from Leaderboards and shared learning experiences.

• Free Language Courses: Access free courses in a variety of languages spanning from Spanish to Japanese and even High Valyrian!

For an enhanced experience, try Super Duolingo free for 14 days! Accelerate your language learning without interruptions, plus enjoy perks like Unlimited Hearts and Monthly Streak Repair.

Learning a Language

Click Home to access your road map. The road map is where you'll do the majority of your learning. It's split into different units, and each unit contains multiple lessons. As you progress through the language, more units will be available to you (you'll be able to unlock them).

There are multiple levels per unit (specified by "Lesson X of Y"). Once you click on each lesson, you'll see what percentage of the way you are to the next level. You can level up either by finishing all of the required lessons in your level or taking the test.

The old skill tree was replaced in August of 2022; however, Duolingo remembers what skills you learned and uses that to adapt the lessons in the future parts of the road map.

Test out of what you already know (optional). If you already have a basic grasp of the language, you can advance ahead with a test. Select "Jump Here" next to the unit that you want to unlock.

Since this is a test of your knowledge, you must make less than four mistakes in order to pass. That means, if you lose all three hearts, you'll still have one more chance, but if you make one more mistake after that, you won't test out. You can try again as many times as you'd like, though. If you test out, you'll be able to level up!

If you are a beginner to your language or do not know the content in your skill very well, it is highly advisable that you start with the lessons until you know the content well. In order to gain a greater comprehension of the language, take screenshots of the lesson content, and write and/or speak using the words and/or sentences in Duolingo.

Click on the first lesson underneath the road map. Within each unit, there are multiple lessons. Click the first one to get started. Unlike the tests, there is no limit on the number of questions you can get wrong, though you must get all of them correct in order to pass. Here are the different types of questions within a lesson:

Vocabulary: You'll see a picture of the item and be asked to name it in either your native or target language.

Translation: You'll be asked to translate a word or sentence out of English and into the other language, or vice versa.

Listening: You'll hear an audio clip of a word or sentence and be asked to type it in. You'll see "Type what you hear" above it. (Note that you won't be translating for these questions — for instance, if you hear the sentence in Spanish, type it in Spanish, not English.) To play the clip more slowly, click the smaller turtle icon beneath the main speaker button. Clicking "Can't listen now" will turn these off for fifteen minutes.

Speaking (optional): You'll be asked to repeat or translate sentences using the microphone on your computer or mobile device. This is only available in select languages.

-If you don't want to do the speaking questions, click the gear in the upper right corner, choose Settings, and switch the microphone option to off.

Handwriting: You'll be asked to write down a specific character on screen. Initially there may be guides when you first learn, but eventually you will have to remember the specific stroke order. This is only available in Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Japanese (Hiragana/Katakana, no Kanji), Korean (Hangul, no Hanja), Russian, Ukranian, Yiddish, and Hindi, however there are plans to expand this feature further to other languages with non-Latin scripts.[2] This is only done when using the "Learn the Characters" menu in Duolingo.