Luis Von Ahn

Mandarin, Mandarin. And that's it. That's the top eight. And after that, there really is a huge drop-off. So we have languages, even large languages. For example, we have Arabic. Arabic is a large language. Not that many people are learning Arabic. So we do put some resources there, but it's much less than for the larger languages.

We don't.

We don't.

We don't.

We don't. We have remained neutral about that. But it is an interesting thing that demand for learning languages is not as correlated as you would like with number of speakers or maybe even... usefulness in a geopolitical world. So, for example, Chinese, even though it is one of our top eight languages to learn, only about 2% of our users are learning Chinese.

We don't. We have remained neutral about that. But it is an interesting thing that demand for learning languages is not as correlated as you would like with number of speakers or maybe even... usefulness in a geopolitical world. So, for example, Chinese, even though it is one of our top eight languages to learn, only about 2% of our users are learning Chinese.

We don't. We have remained neutral about that. But it is an interesting thing that demand for learning languages is not as correlated as you would like with number of speakers or maybe even... usefulness in a geopolitical world. So, for example, Chinese, even though it is one of our top eight languages to learn, only about 2% of our users are learning Chinese.

It's relatively small, even though that's the most spoken language in the world. So if I were to tell people, they're like, you know, maybe more of you should be learning Chinese. You know, one of the things that goes into people's calculus is how hard the language is to learn. Turns out Chinese, at least for English speakers, is just a lot harder.

It's relatively small, even though that's the most spoken language in the world. So if I were to tell people, they're like, you know, maybe more of you should be learning Chinese. You know, one of the things that goes into people's calculus is how hard the language is to learn. Turns out Chinese, at least for English speakers, is just a lot harder.

It's relatively small, even though that's the most spoken language in the world. So if I were to tell people, they're like, you know, maybe more of you should be learning Chinese. You know, one of the things that goes into people's calculus is how hard the language is to learn. Turns out Chinese, at least for English speakers, is just a lot harder.

I mean, we have data to get to, you know, to get to a pretty good point in Spanish for English speakers takes call it three to 400 hours. That same level of knowledge for Chinese takes about 2000 hours. So, you know, the realities in the United States, if you're just going for pragmatism, return on investment, Spanish is probably a much better.

I mean, we have data to get to, you know, to get to a pretty good point in Spanish for English speakers takes call it three to 400 hours. That same level of knowledge for Chinese takes about 2000 hours. So, you know, the realities in the United States, if you're just going for pragmatism, return on investment, Spanish is probably a much better.

I mean, we have data to get to, you know, to get to a pretty good point in Spanish for English speakers takes call it three to 400 hours. That same level of knowledge for Chinese takes about 2000 hours. So, you know, the realities in the United States, if you're just going for pragmatism, return on investment, Spanish is probably a much better.

I mean, in the U.S., you probably should learn Spanish. I mean, it's just, it's quite an easy language to learn.

I mean, in the U.S., you probably should learn Spanish. I mean, it's just, it's quite an easy language to learn.

I mean, in the U.S., you probably should learn Spanish. I mean, it's just, it's quite an easy language to learn.

Yeah. Well, we don't say that. We've tried to remain neutral. We probably would get in trouble, or I would get in trouble inside the company if we started pushing people for certain languages. We try to remain neutral.

Yeah. Well, we don't say that. We've tried to remain neutral. We probably would get in trouble, or I would get in trouble inside the company if we started pushing people for certain languages. We try to remain neutral.

Yeah. Well, we don't say that. We've tried to remain neutral. We probably would get in trouble, or I would get in trouble inside the company if we started pushing people for certain languages. We try to remain neutral.

Yeah, there is. Although I'm very happy with our results in the U.S. The U.S. and the U.K. are pretty interesting because historically there hasn't been a big desire to learn languages in the U.S. and the U.K. The thinking has been whatever you can learn English. In the U.S., 80% of our users were not learning a language before Duolingo. So we're growing the market in the U.S.