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IF YOU TOLD someone that an Irish course would see almost 200,000 signing up, and it would still be in the beta stages, few would have believed you.
Yet that’s exactly what happened when Duolingo, one of the most popular language apps globally with 50 million users, decided to put together an Irish course under its incubator programme, where volunteers put together their own course with help from the main team.
The course was announced back in March with the beta arriving in August and it was not until mid-November that the course quietly arrived on the app. It also had the honour, alongside Dutch, to be one of the first language courses created this way on the service so it was a learning process for both sides.
That success has been down to five people who created (and are currently tweaking) the course. Coming from a diverse background, the team consisted of Alex Burke, Gabriel Beecham, Oisín Ó Doinn, Dylan Mac Lochlainn, and Laura Doherty, each one coming from different backgrounds.
Beecham, a Dublin native, was one of the first two people to start working on the course – the other was Alex Burke, a secondary school student from Cork.
During the daytime, he is a doctor but his interest and passion for languages (he speaks Latin, French, Esperanto, and learnt German) means he engages in similar projects like localising the interface for the Irish versions of Wikipedia and Facebook.
Having that interest in languages meant he heard about Duolingo early on and eventually its search for Irish speakers.
“I was using it to learn German… [when] it announced it was coming out with the incubator programme,” explained Beecham. “I really saw the potential for it in Irish. I’ve been involved in other translation projects… so I like the process of that specialised translation and localisation and internationalisation and it’s really powerful for Irish.”
While that experience certainly helped with organising the course, the nature of the service threw up its own challenges. One problem was the use of audio exercises, which created its fair share of problems according to Beecham.
Up until then, they [Duolingo] were able to use speech synthesis software, but there isn’t that many options available for Irish so Duolingo arranged for a speaker to read out the exercise.That creates its own issues like it’s a particular dialect that’s being used or accent… Irish does have its own complexity as it has three main dialects so we decided to go with the standard Irish as the main version of the language that we teach.But we’re trying to build the course so that it accepts answers in any of the main dialects. It’s kinda difficult to tread that balance but it hasn’t been too bad.
[image alt="Duolingo 2" src="http://cdn.thejournal.ie/media/2014/12/duolingo-2-2-626x500.jpg" width="626" height="500" title="" class="alignnone" /end]
Another issue that had to be addressed was the context of certain words. That was something that brought up its fair share of complications, according to Dylan Mac Lochlainn, another member who isisased in London.
Originally from Tyrone, he is currently in his final year of medicine in UCL and wasn’t involved in the course until mid-way through. Part of Duolingo’s appeal is that it boils everything down to its most basic level. That’s great for the user, but since certain words can have multiple meanings, it can be difficult to avoid some degree of confusion.
“The course wants you to describe each and every word as having a specific meaning so when people are playing a game, they can hover over and see what it means… it starts to get very complicated as you keep adding more and more, people start asking ‘which one should I use here?’ The problem is you see the words and you see all these different forms which you might use in different places.
Yet that hasn’t stopped the uptake being high. Since the beta launched, more than 200,000 people have signed up to the service. The majority are based in the US (64%) while 9% are in Ireland. Other popular countries include England (9%), Canada (6.5%) and Australia (3%).
While the course is accessible to everyone, its role isn’t to create the next generation of native Irish language speakers.
Many will start off but the chances of those who complete the course wanting to take things a step further is pretty small. Mac Lochlainn says that if 1% of those taking the course made the jump, it would be pretty good, but he’s realistic about the course’s role in the greater scheme of things.
The course is an introductory course, it’s not a way to create fluent Irish speakers, it’s not a way to address the problems in the Gaeltacht in keeping Irish alive as a community language, that’s beyond our remit… All we’re trying to do is people who otherwise wouldn’t have been using the language [get the opportunity to learn it].
That opportunity comes from a basic desire to want to learn the language, and a love of Irish and languages is the obvious reason for the team’s contribution, but Mac Lochlainn has a more philosophical viewpoint for why they gave up their free time to help.
We have this great culture of amateurism… where people are giving up their time just out of passion and love for it. Even though we’re not professional, the Irish love an amateur and that’s probably the essence of it for me. Ireland is generally full of people giving up their free time in this great spirit of amateurism… [and] these are the sort of things that are really intrinsic and in the national character.
So what’s stopping it from taking off the beta tag and becoming an official launch? The answer to that is the number of reports it receives. For any course on Duolingo to be completed, the number of reports must be under 3 for every 100 users. Once it’s below this threshold and stays under for a certain period of time, the tag is taken off. It’s getting there – the latest figure was 1.96 reports for every 100 users – but it needs to maintain that standard before it becomes official.
Ultimately, it’s about people enjoying learning the language, whether they’re new or refreshing their memory. Probably one of the best things to happen is the number of Irish speakers who are joining the forums and helping out as Beecham mentions.
“We’re enjoying making the course and people are obviously enjoying using it and people who speak Irish perfectly themselves have come along to the forum and helping other people to learn Irish so there’s a nice community on the forum growing.”
If you want to get started, Duolingo is available on iOS, Android and Windows Phone.
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This is not new news. Employees and people in cork knew that this was coming down the line for the past 18mths. I know plenty that are planning on taking redundancy and are happy to do so as they are earning decent salaries, and many have been in the job a long time and are looking forward to nice fat redundancy cheques. Good luck to them I say.
So, not necessarily hard times you say, it might well be the end of hard times.
So , if as you say ”Employees and people in cork knew that this was coming down the line for the past 18mths.”… Why did the government not ”do ” something to prevent it ,or why was it not announced before the vote last Thursday ?
I will tell you why and that is the same reason Irish Rails job losses were not announce because the government knew it would have effected the way people would have subsequently voted. The same way they announced all the new jobs , which in fairnes will probably not come to anything til 2015.
If those people, in pfizer, get a good redundancy package I would take it too and run…
Susie, please don’t ask sensible questions. The Ffg/Labour auto-bots cannot process sensible questions. Their supreme leader is infallible.
Susie read the article. The patent on one of their main drugs is running out. They can’t afford to keep producing it against rivals who will make it on the cheap. What do you want the government to do exactly ?
Susie, Lipitor came off patent here. It is no longer viable for pfizer to manufacture it, as all the generics can do it now.
This brings the cost of a medicine down, albeit at the cost of those jobs.
Pharma is a huge industry in cork, especially in little island and ringaskiddy. Experienced pharmacutical workers are in demand down here. Those workers will get reducdancy packs, and shouldn’t have much difficulty picking up a new job in one of the many other tabletting plants nearby.
What do you think the govt should “do” in this situation? To me it looks like the timeline of normal pharma business.
Hopefully a new drug will be produced at the plant between now and next year and the jobs could be saved.
Good points Susie yet again.
Vote Yes for Jobs
And a no vote would have preserved the patents on drugs produced in Ireland? This news has absolutely nothing to do with any government or EU change to the business environment in Ireland.
Oh I know that – you see before I made up my mind on which way I was going to vote. Every single job announcement on this website was followed with the Vote yes for jobs when they had nothing to do with “any government or EU change to the business environment in Ireland”, so using the same illogical logic I say “Vote Yes for Jobs” now.
Terrible news…
While I voted no this has nothing to do with treaties just as a previous poster said the patents hav run out and it’s now an open market.
It may mean that with patents expiring the price will go down thus demand may rise in areas where they previously it was not bought.
No sign of Enda Kenny or Richard Bruton! I mean Enda was first to get his face in when a whole 40 new jobs were being announce a couple of weeks ago!
What can he do that’s beyond his power
Peter, according to your logic, its OK for Enda to do photo ops when jobs are announced, and its doubly OK for Enda to scurry away into some hole when Job losses are announced. Damn the FFg/Labour auto-bots are simply sickening. Its solidarity that the people want to see, not some moron who only shows up to get his Photo in the papers and news when job announcements are made, He is a lieing, obnoxious traitor, who wouldnt debate the referendum, but is happy to be seen anywhere that makes him look ‘good’.
Cal, local TD Simon Coveney has been out today to express his regret at the job losses.
The only thing this has to do with the treaty is the timing of the announcement, like with Dublin bus. Openness and transparency alright!
Good luck to all effected.
Generic = cheaper,so every cloud eh
This was always on the cards as the life cycle of Lipitor was coming to an end and as others have said it was known 18 months ago. It is also the reason why the pharma companies are looking towards biopharma as a solution to the problem of patent expiration due to the complexities of producing generic or bio-similar drugs even if the patent has finished.
One thing the health boards can do, is to make sure that the cheaper generic medicines, which will be prescribed, are manufactured in Ireland.
A sad day
Expect more of this, alot more. To all those in the HSE wishing to push down drug prices to ridiculous levels there will be consequences to your actions. Generic substitution and more importantly reference pricing at the dispensing end in no way guarantee that the generics the government pays for are actually manufactured here, probably the contrary in fact. This doesn’t even begin to address drug “shortages” which in actuality are simply manufacturers diverting supply to more profitable larger markets than Ireland.
have your say