We hear that our current mayor is using popular tool Dewi Duo Lingo to brush up her Cymraeg. This time, it's a health emergency project and the councillor's been using the lockdown favourite Duolingo program for well over 200 days. Good for her!
It seems that Welsh on Duolingo is popular. There are 484,000 using it to learn Welsh. Apparently, in the early lockdown period from Mach 2020, Welsh saw a 44 per cent increase on Duolingo. Even so, it's still only the seventh most popular language Duo Lingo teaches in the UK.
Back to the mayor. The councillor's commitment to Welsh is significant and she has consistently been learning for about one hour a day, apparently. That's impressive, because we also know that the mayor is a voluntary position which is expected to do much, resulting in hundreds of hours of unpaid labour. This often alongside her 'proper' job. Where then does the mayor find the time to say such classics as 'I came here to enjoy the parsnips' and 'Owen has lost the parsnips in a game'? Does Duo Lingo think that it's parsnips rather than leeks?
If all these 484,000 become fluent, and if all these live in Wales, it will increase the number confident in Welsh from 884,000 to 1.4mil. That's 400,000 over the Welsh government's target.
If only it were that easy.
We do wonder, of course, whether the 484,000 are using Duolingo actively and whether those who are active are using it alongside more traditional, immersive methods (presumably these days via Zoom). Duolingo is quite superficial unless backed up by the classroom. And, it doesn't actually promote learning by conversation with others.
Welsh is beaten by High Valyrian, the language used on Game of Thrones. We don't know how many in the UK are learning that one. And there are 300,000 Klingon learners. But Welsh is more popular than Czech, Yiddish, Swahili, Ukrainian, Hungarian and Esperanto. There appear to be 565,000 learners taking a course on Duolingo in Hawaiian which, as far as we can tell, is 30 times the number of native speakers.
'Run to see the parsnips!' Really?