Duolingo is a free language-learning and crowdsourced text translation platform. The service is designed so that, as users progress through the lessons, they simultaneously help to translate websites and other documents. As of 23 March 2015, Duolingo provides Latin American Spanish, French, German, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Irish, Danish, Swedish and Turkish courses for English speakers, as well as American English for Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Greek, Dutch, Russian, Polish, Turkish, Hungarian, Romanian, Japanese, Hindi, Indonesian, Korean, Vietnamese, and Czech speakers. It also provides many other combinations of languages. It is available on the Web, iOS, Android and Windows Phone 8.1 platforms.
Duolingo started its private beta on 30 November 2011 and accumulated a waiting list of more than 300,000 users. On 19 June 2012, Duolingo launched for the general public. In 2013, Apple chose Duolingo as its iPhone App of the Year, the first time this honor was awarded to an educational application. Duolingo won Best Education Startup at the 2014 Crunchies, and was the most downloaded education app in Google Play in 2013 and 2014. As of January 2014, Duolingo has 60 million users, out of which about 20 million are active.
