[Last updated: March 31, 2022]
Duolingo is one of the best ways to get yourself started in a new language, not just because it’s free, but because there’s such a bountiful buffet of languages to choose from!
If you’re looking to learn a language from English then this is the article for you. English speakers have the biggest choice when it comes to languages on Duolingo — and the options are growing all the time!
In this article, we’ll go through every single Duolingo language. We’ll look at Duolingo’s fictional and beta languages, new languages coming in 2022, and we’ll also consider which courses are currently the best.
Let’s dive in!
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How many languages does Duolingo have?
Duolingo currently offer 41 different languages, 38 of which for English speakers.
Some of these are better supported than others, and this depends on the popularity of the language. As a general rule of thumb: the more learners a language has on Duolingo, the more content and features it will get.
RELATED: 28 Duolingo Tips That EVERY User Should Know About
Duolingo Languages List – All 38 Languages Ranked By Popularity
As of March 2022, Duolingo offer the following languages for English speakers:
- Spanish – 28.2m learners
- French – 17.3m learners
- Japanese – 12.3m learners
- German – 9.62m learners
- Korean – 9.42m learners
- Italian – 6.55m learners
- Hindi – 5.77m learners
- Chinese – 5.71m learners
- Russian – 4.85m learners
- Arabic – 3.61m learners
- Turkish – 2.88m learners
- Portuguese – 2.63m learners
- Dutch – 1.62m learners
- Latin – 1.41m learners
- Vietnamese – 1.37m learners
- Swedish – 1.31m learners
- Greek – 1.22m learners
- Irish – 1.22m learners
- Polish – 1.15m learners
- Norwegian – 1.04m learners
- Hebrew – 908k learners
- Ukrainian – 722k learners
- Indonesian – 689k learners
- Hawaiian – 588k learners
- Danish – 573k learners
- Finnish – 566k learners
- Romanian – 545k learners
- High Valyrian – 520k learners
- Welsh – 498k learners
- Yiddish (beta) – 491k learners
- Czech – 481k learners
- Scottish Gaelic – 431k learners
- Swahili – 396k learners
- Hungarian (beta) – 357k learners
- Klingon (beta) – 305k learners
- Esperanto – 296k learners
- Navajo (beta) – 295k learners
- Haitian Creole (beta) – 168k learners [NEW for 2022!]
Duolingo also offer English courses in 22 different languages (with another 4 currently in Phase 1 of development in the Incubator), as well as Catalan and Guarani for Spanish speakers.
Follow me on Duolingo!
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Duolingo fictional languages
You’ll notice that a couple of the languages Duolingo offer aren’t exactly ‘real-world’ lingos. These are High Valyrian and Klingon, taken from Game of Thrones and Star Trek respectively.
As you might expect, these aren’t as in-depth as some of the other courses and aren’t as well supported. But if you’re a fan of either of these franchises, they’re definitely worth exploring!
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Duolingo beta languages
You’ll also notice that some of the languages are labelled as ‘beta’ languages. This means they are currently in Phase 2 of development in the Incubator.
The courses that are currently in beta are Hungarian, Klingon, Navajo, Yiddish and Haitian Creole.
A beta course is a language that has been released to the public but is still in development. Bugs and teething issues are to be expected. Eventually, a beta course will enter Phase 3 of the Incubator, which is when it can be considered polished and ready-to-go.
That said, no course is ever complete (just look at all the changes Duolingo have made to the French and Spanish course over the years!) so expect updates to continue long into the future!
What are the best Duolingo courses?
In terms of support, the best Duolingo courses are currently French and Spanish for IOS users. These are the two most popular languages on Duolingo and, as such, receive the most updates and all the latest features.
They both have the longest and most regularly updated lesson trees, as well as a huge library of Stories. It gets even better for French users, who get access to Duolingo’s swanky new Audio Lessons, as well as conversation lessons.
Away from the app, French and Spanish also receive accompanying podcasts, which you can listen to on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.
After French and Spanish, the next best courses, in my opinion, are German, Italian, Portuguese and Japanese, as these are the only other courses that have stories.
RELATED: Duolingo Stories – The COMPLETE Guide – What You Need To Know
New Duolingo languages for 2022 and beyond
So far Duolingo have released one new language in 2022: Haitian Creole, which they released in February.
Other courses in the first phase of development include Māori and Tamil, but, unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to have been much progress on either. Māori was due to launch on February 21, 2021, but hasn’t been updated for over a year; and Tamil doesn’t currently have any contributors working on it.
Luis von Ahn announced at Duocon 2021 that the next 5 languages to launch on Duolingo will be:
- Tagalog
- Zulu
- Xhosa
- Mãori
Haitian Creole[Launched]
duolingo tagalog
Tagalog is one of Duolingo’s most requested languages.
And given that it’s thought to be spoken by roughly 82 million people, it’s easy to see why!
However, despite von Ahn stating that Tagalog will be one of Duolingo’s next languages, Duolingo doesn’t currently teach Tagalog, and there’s no trace of it in the Incubator.
As of March 2022, Tagalog is only available as a base language for those who want to learn English.
Which language will you learn?
Duolingo offer an amazing choice of languages.
But which ones take your fancy? And which language should Duolingo add next?
Be sure to let me know in the comments!
I would love to learn Bengali
Klingon is Star Trek, not Star Wars. Two completely unrelated franchises.
Esperanto is also technically not a real world language, though unlike the others, it was invented to act as one.
Hey Levi! You’re absolutely right – good spot! I’ve updated the article. Cheers for letting me know!
Sorry to say but esperanto is a true language with more than 2 mill. native speakers.
Bulgarian please 🇧🇬
I would love Croatian and Icelandic. I’ve seen so many people begging for Duolingo to add Icelandic, starting from 5 to 6 years ago, and am sure there must be plenty of people who would welcome it.
What about Thai. Thailand is a country that I’m passionate about and really want to learn to speak Thai
I would live a course on Persian – with Roman alphabet words, not Persian alphabet.
Similarly I would a Chinese course with Roman alphabet words, instead of characters.
If only we had it in Arabic script I would be very happy already. Its not very hard to learn and it helps a lot to be able to read things.
We need Icelandic pleeeease !
I am looking forward to Maori being added. Current platforms for learning the language are challenging and expensive and don’t include that feedback loop they duo lingo has
Here’s hoping the developers get onto it soon
Definitely looking forward to haitian creole, I’ve wanted to learn it for a long time, and haven’t found any courses on it (in my city).
I’d like to see Old English (Anglo-Saxon) added to Duolingo.
But in my view, they also need to flesh out the current language offerings.
I would like to learn Catalan. Very fascinating language based on Vulgate regional Latin spoken by ancient Romans in the area of Catalonia. Must be many people who would be interested when they visit Catalonia.
Bulgarian for me too! It’s an EU language on top of that.
Lithuanian would be fantastic! There are very few options for online learning and over 3 million native speakers. It is a beautiful country. Before I visited I needed to cobble together YouTube videos to build a small vocabulary.
Hey! I want you to tell the contributors that I want Estonian. It is a real-world language and is popular in Estonia.
I see Tagalog is in the pipeline – Tagalog is specific for the north of the Philippines and yes, including capital Manila.
More useful however would be Filipino, which acts more like a lingua franca and is still developing.
Last but not least: if you want to give credit to learning 2000 words in one course, a course should contain 2000!
I took Indonesian and it stops on 1800. 🙁
Thai? Yes please!
Cebuano? Double yes!!
I would love to continue learning Tagalog as a way of connecting with my family. What I know thus far was taught by my mother (may she rest in peace). I would like to continue that learning and maybe even learn about the different dialects (Ilocano/Bisaysan/etc.) spoken in the Philippines. If there is anything I can do to get the ball rolling faster, I wouldn’t hesitate to do it.
Mahal na mahal kita, nanay. Nasa ang puso ko iyo.
I wish urgently to learn Tagalog.
Can’t wait for Zulu to land, looking forward to learning it!
I’d love to learn to speak Bemba. Spoken in most of Zambia.
JJ