The annual language report from Pittsburgh-based edtech company Duolingo Inc. appears to paint a global picture of solidarity for Ukraine and its people amid the Russian invasion of its lands that began last February.
Released on Tuesday, Duolingo's (NASDAQ: DUOL) report also cited that over one billion hours have been spent learning a language by its hundreds of millions of users over the past year, all of whom collectively completed more than 14 billion lessons and learned 24 billion words.
But the company said the biggest trend gleaned from the report came from those who took time to use Duolingo's platform to learn Ukrainian.
Over 1.3 million people enrolled in Ukrainian courses in February shortly after the Russian invasion began. Those figures peaked in late March, Duolingo said, and have remained steady throughout the year.
Some countries that saw the highest number of Ukrainian refugees also saw Ukrainan take the spot as the fastest-growing language within their own borders following the start of the invasion, surpassing year-over-year increases of 1,651% in Germany, 1,615% in Poland and 1,515% in Czechia. Ireland-based people learning Ukrainian posted the highest increase out of all nations analyzed in the report, growing over 2,229% year-over-year, Duolingo said, and noted that countries far from the invasion — like Argentina, Vietnam and Japan — also have Ukrainian as their fastest-growing language, too.
The mass migration of refugees from Ukraine also likely caused language learning anomalies in the countries where many of these people eventually settled.
"We see the impact of refugee resettlement in a country like Germany: German became the second most popular language to study in Germany in 2021, likely because Germany welcomed over three-quarters of a million Ukrainians in just the first half of 2022," Cindy Blanco, senior learning scientist at Duolingo, wrote in the report. "The war also spurred record numbers of Ukrainians to take the Duolingo English Test (DET) to certify their English proficiency to study internationally — Ukrainian test takers increased 4,000% year-over-year."
As for other takeaways from the report, English remains the most popular language studied by people who use Duolingo across all countries, serving as the top language being learned on Duolingo's platform in 119 nations. Spanish is in second with 34 countries having it as its most popular language being learned on Duolingo's platform followed by French, which is the most popular language being learned on Duolingo in 22 countries.
In the U.S., Spanish remains the most popular language being learned on Duolingo followed by English.
