![]() “You could be from anywhere and Duolingo could lead you to this Yiddish world where you could become fluent in it.”Īs an example of someone who took on Yiddish later in life, Viswanath cited her father, a native of India who learned the language and married Gitl Schaechter-Viswanath, editor of the “Comprehensive English-Yiddish Dictionary” and a daughter of Mordkhe Schaecter, the progenitor of a dynasty of Yiddishists. Let me look up further opportunities.’ And then could take them further,” she said. “Just the amount of exposure that it is going to bring for the Yiddish language, and increase that pipeline of people who then might do the course and then say, ‘Hey, this is interesting. While she admits that using a Duolingo course is not equivalent to taking a college-level or immersive summer language class - and the first version of the course will take users only to an approximate “intermediate” level (Duolingo often adds content to its courses over time with the help of user feedback) - she does think it will have a big impact on the general public’s interest in and recognition of the language. Viswanath was the only representative on the Duolingo creator team of the more secular, academic realm of Yiddish learning. ![]() ĭuolingo is giving users who order in Yiddish a free bagel on the course launch date. Second, it’s probably less likely to result in anything approaching fluency: Duolingo has been criticized for being fun but not offering functional language instruction. First, it’s geared toward introducing users to contemporary spoken Yiddish rather than the historical form taught at YIVO or The Workers Circle classes. The Duolingo program is different from those classes in ways that go beyond gamification. “It was a chance of a lifetime for people who didn’t have to come to New York and spend money on renting a place, which can cost more than the registration for the program, or who couldn’t come for the whole summer,” Dovid Braun, the YIVO program’s academic director, told The New York Jewish Week in August. Meanwhile, YIVO’s Uriel Weinreich Summer Program saw attendance increase by 60% to 120 people - and then five times as many students enrolled for the winter program compared to the previous year. The Workers Circle classes last summer had 305 students from 20 countries and 32 states, a 65% jump from the previous year. The new course comes amid an explosion of interest in Yiddish instruction during the pandemic. The company is taking the dopamine boost to a new level for promoting the Yiddish course: Those who start on its launch date can get a free bagel courtesy of Duolingo at a few participating shops across the country, including Katz’s Deli in New York and Manny’s Cafeteria in Chicago - as long as the users place their orders in Yiddish. Its cast of cartoonish characters, including its mascot owl aptly named Duo, adds to the fun atmosphere. Users accumulate points and climb leaderboards of fellow “players” for finishing lessons and practicing every day. Launched in 2012 to help Spanish-speaking immigrants access English education, Duolingo now offers 40 languages on a free app that condenses language learning into what many, its founder included, have compared to a game. “But then when we recorded the audio, we used the pronunciation that is used in the vernacular among students, specifically in Borough Park in Brooklyn and so forth.” ![]() “We used mostly the spelling and grammar that’s a little bit more formalized among the secular Yiddishists,” Viswanath said. The result of those negotiations will be visible when the course goes live on April 6, tapping into the groundswell of interest in the language spoken by at least 500,000 Jews around the world and studied by others. She wasn’t prepared for the challenge of blending the academic Yiddish she knows with the everyday dialect spoken by her Hasidic colleagues on the project. ( JTA) - When Meena Viswanath signed on more than two years ago to help Duolingo, the world’s largest language learning app, create its first Yiddish course, she knew it wouldn’t be easy.īut Viswanath, the daughter and granddaughter of famed Yiddish scholars who speaks Yiddish at home with her children, assumed most of the difficulties would be technical.
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