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 offers 43 different languages, 39 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.
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Duolingo Languages List – All 39 Languages Ranked By Popularity
As of September 2022, Duolingo offers the following languages for English speakers:
- Spanish – 30.3m learners
- French – 18.3m learners
- Japanese – 12.9m learners
- Korean – 10.7m learners
- German – 10.6m learners
- Italian – 7.24m learners
- Hindi – 7.2m learners
- Chinese – 5.9m learners
- Russian – 5.15m learners
- Arabic – 3.96m learners
- Turkish – 2.96m learners
- Portuguese – 2.82m learners
- Dutch – 1.83m learners
- Vietnamese – 1.75m learners
- Greek – 1.47m learners
- Latin – 1.46m learners
- Swedish – 1.45m learners
- Polish – 1.39m learners
- Ukrainian – 1.32m learners
- Irish – 1.32m learners
- Norwegian – 1.13m learners
- Hebrew – 962k learners
- Indonesian – 770k learners
- Danish – 645k learners
- Finnish – 628k learners
- Hawaiian – 605k learners
- Romanian – 595k learners
- High Valyrian – 566k learners
- Czech – 549k learners
- Welsh – 523k learners
- Scottish Gaelic – 443k learners
- Swahili – 433k learners
- Hungarian (beta) – 408k learners
- Haitian Creole (beta) – 354k learners [NEW for 2022!]
- Klingon (beta) – 307k learners
- Yiddish (beta) – 301k learners
- Esperanto – 299k learners
- Navajo (beta) – 291k learners
- Zulu (beta) – 32.1k learners [NEW for 2022!]
Duolingo offers English courses in 25 different languages, with another 3 currently in the ‘Hatching‘ phase of development (Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu).
Duolingo also offers Catalan and Guarani for Spanish speakers, as well as Cantonese for Mandarin Chinese speakers.
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Duolingo fictional languages
You’ll notice that a couple of Duolingo’s languages 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 still in development, but are available to use.
The Duolingo courses that are currently in beta are Hungarian, Haitian Creole, Klingon, Yiddish, Navajo, and Zulu.
With a beta course, bugs and teething issues are to be expected as the guys at Duolingo apply the finishing touches.
That said, no course is ever complete (just look at all the changes Duolingo have made to the French and Spanish courses 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, audio lessons and 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 launched two new languages in 2022: Haitian Creole, which they released in February, and Zulu, which they dropped in August.
Prior to Duolingo closing the Incubator, Māori and Tamil were in the early stages of development. Māori had been due to launch on February 21, 2021, and Luis von Ahn announced at Duocon 2021 that it would be one of Duolingo’s next 5 languages.
However, like Tamil, there is currently no indication that either will launch any time soon.
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.
As of September 2022, Tagalog is only available as a base language for those who want to learn English.
Which language will you learn?
Duolingo offers 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.
That is simply false. There is no country or region where that is anyone’s first language.
Google definition: “an ARTIFICIAL language devised in 1887” so it is not a real language but it is an auxiliary language so it allows people from different regions to communicate
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.
Yes Croatian! (Hundreds of times more speakers – not to mention tourists there)
What about Thai. Thailand is a country that I’m passionate about and really want to learn to speak Thai
Yes Thai please!
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 !
YESS, the Latin of Germanic languages!
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!!
Chinese stops at 1932 words. They should add the 68 words so we can receive our badges. Also it would take away the perception that Duolingo is not paying attention to us.
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
Please, Duolingo, bring European Portuguese to the app.🌈
Would love to see Icelandic, the Latin of Germanic languages!
As a resident of Ethiopia, it would be amazing if Duo offered Amharic. Or English for Amharic speakers. It would be immediately applicable in my context. There is currently no online platform that offers it.
I’d love to see Cornish on Duolingo!
I’d like to learn Cantonese and Teochew rather than Mandarin Chinese
I need to learn Bemba from Zambia
Please add Hrvatski
I’m hoping for Tagalog and Cebuano languages to come out soon.
I would love to see more European languages, like Croatian, Icelandic, Hungarian, Romanian…
I understand that Duo addresses more European languages but why not to add Persian , Uzbek, other Indian languages?
I would LOVE sindarin or qenya from tolkien….. maybe even the divine language from 5th element.
Armenian, Icelandic and Thai would be excellent. Personally, I would also like to see Dzongkha, Nahuatl and Quechua although I doubt they would be so popular. It would be great if Duolingo also extended some of the shorter courses such as Finnish and Latin., particularly Finnish as it is such a difficult language.