Skip to main content

Duolingo is now offering a beta version of Latin courses

Duolingo is one of the most popular apps on the market for folks who want to learn languages. And now, the service is giving users a way to truly ‘carpe diem’ by offering a course in Latin.

If you’re wondering why Duolingo is offering lessons for a language that hasn’t been commonly used since the 8th Century, that’s totally fair. Here’s the scoop: Latin is the backbone for a variety of romance languages, as well as the language of origin for plenty of words across a number of languages, including English.

Studying Latin gives folks a way to study the infrastructure of a handful of other languages.

Moreover, there are plenty of historians, linguists, and professors who wish to read works like The Aeneid by Virgil or Metamorphoses by Ovid or Meditations by Marcus Aurelius in their original Latin form.

Duolingo 2

Duolingo uses mini-games to help users learn languages. Mini-courses reward users for finishing a course and take away ‘a life’ (like a videogame) when users make a mistake. The company hopes that the end result of a user finishing a course is that they’re able to read, write, speak and comprehend that language.

Moreover, Duolingo has troves of data around how people actually learn languages, and uses machine learning to tweak and improve its service based on that data.

Duolingo has raised more than $100 million across five rounds of funding since it launched in 2011, according to Crunchbase.



from Startups – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2PhNPBD
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Axeleo Capital raises $51 million fund

Axeleo Capital has raised a $51 million fund (€45 million). Axeleo first started with an accelerator focused on enterprise startups. The firm is now all grown up with an acceleration program and a full-fledged VC fund. The accelerator is now called Axeleo Scale , while the fund is called Axeleo Capital . And it’s important to mention both parts of the business as they work hand in hand. Axeleo picks up around 10 startups per year and help them reach the Series A stage. If they’re doing well over the 12 to 18 months of the program, Axeleo funds those startups using its VC fund. Limited partners behind the company’s first fund include Bpifrance through the French Tech Accélération program, the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, Vinci Energies, Crédit Agricole, BNP Paribas, Caisse d’Épargne Rhône-Alpes as well as various business angels and family offices. The firm is also partnering with Hi Inov, the holding company of the Dentressangle family. Axeleo will take care of the early stage in...
Post a Comment
Read more

Puls raises $50 million for in-home technical support

A fund affiliated with the Singaporean government has a great interest in making sure that American consumers are getting the tech support they need. Temasek, the multi-billion-dollar investment fund associated with the government in Singapore, has led a $50 million round for  Puls Technologies, Inc. , a San Francisco-based company aiming to be the tech support for American homes and offices. Current investors Sequoia Capital, Red Dot Capital Partners, Samsung NEXT and Viola Ventures all participated in the new financing, alongside additional new investors Hanaco Ventures and Hamilton Lane. Founded only three years ago, Puls pitches a service that can match consumers with the appropriate technician in a little over an hour, any day of the week. The company has built a network of 2,500 technicians in the top 50 cities in the United States, and will provide same-day installation and repair of over 200 products. Some things the company’s technicians can service include smartphon...
Post a Comment
Read more