It's a big world out there.
Billions of us trying to live, love, prosper,
and make sense of our brief time on this planet.
Since the dawn of humanity, we've been passing
information from one person to another through
a common language.
Unfortunately, you can't communicate with others
without knowing or learning their language first.
A similar issue is manifested on the web where
text can be penned in dozens of different languages,
each of which demands a reader's fluency.
We've developed an elegant solution to both
problems -- a way for you to learn a language for
free, while at the same time helping to translate
text from the web, enabling a wealth of
language-shackled information to be liberated for
all of humanity. It's called "duolingo".
Here's how it works: Let's say you're a native
English speaker who wants to learn Spanish.
We start by giving you a sentence from a Spanish
web site and asking you to translate it.
Wait. Back up.
How can you translate a language you don't know?
First, duolingo only gives you sentences that fit
your language level. Beginners get the really simple
sentences from the web and advanced users get the
more complex ones.
This way, everybody becomes a valuable translator.
And second, if you're really lost, you can always
see possible translations for words you don't know.
Afterwards, duolingo helps you understand and
memorize the words you hovered over through
educational examples.
You can also vote on the quality of other students'
translations, which helps you learn by seeing how
others translated the same sentence.
And because you create valuable translations while
you learn, we return the favor by offering duolingo
completely free of charge: no ads, no hidden fees,
no subscriptions. Just free.
To put the potential benefit of duolingo into
perspective, think about this: if one million
people would use duolingo to learn, the entirety
of English Wikipedia could be translated to Spanish
in just 80 hours.
Duolingo: Learn a language while translating the web.
