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The best language learning apps on Android
It's time to stop copying and pasting into Google Translate
Have you ever wanted to learn a new language, maybe to converse with your neighbor in their native tongue? Or perhaps you’d love to visit a specific country on your bucket list, but you’re anxious about navigating your way around? A language learning app can help immensely, especially when it comes to learning simple words and phrases to help familiarize yourself with the dialect you may have never heard before.
Being a native Arabic speaker, it never occurred to me how complicated the language is compared to many others. I learned to speak it, read it, and write it ever since I was a kid, so I rarely notice its idiosyncrasies and instead simply think of all of it as second nature. If you come from another background though, Arabic can be a daunting language to learn, but that's exactly what Duolingo has taken on. The service now offers Arabic courses for English speakers in its apps and on its site.
You don't have to be a genius to work out that China is going to be an increasingly significant nation in the coming years, culturally and economically. More than one billion people already speak Chinese, and that's sure to continue rising. It's been one of the most requested languages over at Duolingo, which is ready to launch Mandarin Chinese in its mobile apps and on the web.
You may think that learning English isn't exactly a priority for the world's most populous country. While many Chinese people probably have little reason to speak English in their daily lives, there are still plenty who want to learn the language, either for business or personal reasons. As Mandarin is so different, pronunciation is particularly difficult to master. That's where Microsoft's new app, Engkoo, comes in.
Duolingo's Korean for English speakers language learning page has been asking for people to sign up for a while now. It's one of the top languages people register their interest in and today the course is finally launching.
Duolingo is one of the most popular apps on the Play Store, but oddly, its social features have been a bit on the light side up to now. The latest update to the language learning service aims to alleviate that with Duolingo Clubs. The feature is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: users (or "players" as Duolingo likes to call them) can congregate into social clubs to keep track of each other's use of the app and progress though the guided, game-style courses.
Update, 7-25-14: A Carnegie Mellon representative informed us that in fact the Duolingo Test Center results will not factor into determining an applicant's English skills, it will merely be used in research to test the exam's effectiveness, at least at the moment.
Duolingo is one of the most simplistic, visually appealing language learning experience someone can come across, and the fact that it's a mobile app they can take anywhere is just one heck of a perk. Today's update doesn't shake things up for existing users, but it has what it takes to bring in many more. Now English courses are available for people who speak Hindi as their native language, Russian speakers have the option to learn German, and German speakers are welcome to learn French.
When it comes time to learn a new language on a mobile device (what, you haven't?), Duolingo is the first that comes to mind. But let's say you've completed everything that app has to offer - what then? Lingua.ly has arrived for Android, and it's ready to help newcomers learn any of over twenty languages.
At the end of May, language-learning app Duolingo hit Android with hopes of bringing "a college-quality education without the price tag" to the mobile scene. As useful as it was at the time, however, it had a couple of fairly major shortcomings: lack of a tablet-optimized interface and/or landscape support. In about a month's time, however, the company has already managed to cough up an update that not only brings both of those features to the table, but also an all-new leaderboard feature that lets you compete with your friends.
Duolingo Releases Android App, Brings Free Language Learning On The Go
I've lived in Texas for upwards of a decade now, and there have been numerous occasions when I've vowed to learn Spanish. I haven't actually followed
I've lived in Texas for upwards of a decade now, and there have been numerous occasions when I've vowed to learn Spanish. I haven't actually followed through with that goal (or even attempted to), but thanks to Duolingo and its new Android app, I think I may finally take the time to learn a second language.