Duolingo Adds Beta Support For Swedish In Latest App Update

Duolingo, perhaps the best app for language learning on the Android platform, has added yet another option for prospective students: the native tongue of PewDiePie, Swedish. With the latest update, Swedish joins recent additions Irish and Dutch along with Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, and Danish as options for English speakers. For now, Swedish is in a beta stage, according to Duolingo’s website. You can still use it as normal though, they just don’t promise absolute stability.

Swedish is spoken by nearly 10 million people throughout the world, mostly in Sweden and Finland. While sentences like Vad var det för ord – var det långt eller kort, var det väl eller illa skrivet? might seem impenetrable to an English speaker, Swedish is not so different. Both (as well as several others) are Germanic languages, descending from an out-of-use common ancestor. The Foreign Service Institute places Swedish in the easiest category of languages to learn for English speakers, meaning it is similar in difficulty to Spanish, Italian, and French.

Duolingo is completely free, without any additional features that must be purchased. You can choose to learn (or try to learn) as many languages as you please. They have tried to “gamify” the learning process, giving you awards as you learn new vocabulary and concepts. Learning a language is very difficult and is probably best done either in a classroom or while living among native speakers, but Duolingo is probably far more practical for most people when considering its price and convenience.