(Jewish Group) How Duolingo created a Yiddish course with a secular scholar and Hasidic Jews
When Meena Viswanath signed on more than two years ago to help Duolingo, the world’s largest language learning app, create its first Yiddish course, she knew it wouldn’t be easy.
But Viswanath, the daughter and granddaughter of famed Yiddish scholars who speaks Yiddish at home with her children, assumed most of the difficulties would be technical. She wasn’t prepared for the challenge of blending the academic Yiddish she knows with the everyday dialect spoken by her Hasidic colleagues on the project.
The result of those negotiations will be visible when the course goes live on April 6, tapping into the groundswell of interest in the language spoken by at least 500,000 Jews around the world and studied by others.
“We used mostly the spelling and grammar that’s a little bit more formalized among the secular Yiddishists,” Viswanath said. “But then when we recorded the audio, we used the pronunciation that is used in the vernacular among students, specifically in Borough Park in Brooklyn and so forth.”
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I really like DuoLingo! If you haven't checked it out, do! I tis a great way to start a new language (Romanian) or brush up on languages you already know (longer list). There are glitches, but it is fun. There are over 40 languages.
