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19165 signed up to be notified of the Duolingo Esperanto course. Significance?

ya jdawdy, 28 Aprili 2015

Ujumbe: 49

Lugha: English

jdawdy (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 28 Aprili 2015 2:26:56 alasiri

As of today, there are 19164 people signed up to be notified when the Duolingo Esperanto course is ready- which will be very soon, as it's 99% complete.

Considering Duolingo is probably the most popular language learning site on the internet, and that Norwegian and Ukrainian, both at a similar stage and with over 50 million speakers combined, have, respectively, 12000 and 13000 signed up, does this indicate that there is a large pool of potential Esperantists out there? Will we see a jump in interest? Are the numbers mainly people already exposed to Esperanto, or those who think it sounds interesting?

Of course, the proof will be in the green pudding: When the course is released and we see how many people are actually taking it.

Tempodivalse (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 28 Aprili 2015 2:41:51 alasiri

I hear that the actual number of people who will take the Duolingo Esperanto course is likely to be at least 100k, based on the proportion of signups before release to actual users post-release.

It's quite exciting to see this level of interest, though one must be aware that a large percentage of those people are just going to do two lessons and then lose interest. However, those people will still have been exposed to Esperanto, so it's at minimum good for spreading awareness.

Esperanto has a large Internet presence, which rivals languages with many millions of speakers. So it doesn't surprise me to see more signups than for Ukrainian or Norwegian.

Alkanadi (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 28 Aprili 2015 3:53:52 alasiri

Tempodivalse:I hear that the actual number of people who will take the Duolingo Esperanto course is likely to be at least 100k, based on the proportion of signups before release to actual users post-release...
I think you are right. I am waiting in anticipation and I am watching the incubator closely. I downloaded the app on my iPhone. Yet, I have not signed up to be notified.

jdawdy (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 28 Aprili 2015 5:03:09 alasiri

Tempodivalse:I hear that the actual number of people who will take the Duolingo Esperanto course is likely to be at least 100k, based on the proportion of signups before release to actual users post-release.
I was skeptical when I read that, but looking at the numbers of people learning Danish, Swedish and Turkish- all of which are basically "single-country" languages (yes, I know Danish and Swedish have a lot of crossover) with a relatively small number of speakers compared to languages like Russian or Chinese, and unlike French or Spanish are not widely spoken outside of their national borders- you may well be right, or even a bit on the low side.

I sincerely hopte that the UEA and national organizations will jump on this opportunity. This could result in the biggest growth in Esperanto interest in the last 100 years. At the risk of armchair quarterbacking, I'd be spending every penny on ads in mass media and the internet that say: "X thousands of people are learning Esperanto, the easy, fun International Language to promote peace and cooperation among the people of the world: Find out more at www.uea.org" etc etc.

Tempodivalse (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 28 Aprili 2015 5:17:46 alasiri

To clarify, the 100k figure comes from an in-person conversation with one of the Esperanto-Duolingo developers (who gave me an opportunity to sample some of the material) and reading some information about previous Duolingo editions.

The general gist is that there is a roughly 5:1 ratio between number of actual users to official subscribers. This makes sense if you consider that many people, like Alkanadi, are just watching "from the sidelines", while others will become interested when they hear the release announcement, etc.

se (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 28 Aprili 2015 5:30:02 alasiri

Already 19416. the subscribers are jumping in fast.

This is for the English speaker,as far as I am concerned, I did not subscribe for it because I am not an English speakers and I think my English is no suffice for the course.

erinja (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 28 Aprili 2015 8:48:30 alasiri

I don't think the numbers mean much. I have "signed up" for probably three Duolingo languages and I have spent a grand total of maybe 15 minutes on them. A year ago. Even if 100 000 people open up the Esperanto app, I don't believe that anything close to that number will actually learn the language. And some of the people who wanted to be notified (and some people who will sign up) are undoubtedly people who already speak Esperanto but are curious to take a look at the course.

In spite of Duolingo being the flavor of the month in language learning, I haven't seen a real jump in the number of people I meet who speak foreign languages. Unfortunately most people simply aren't willing to put the time and effort into language learning, and although Duolingo is fun, it isn't Candy Crush.

Noddy (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 28 Aprili 2015 9:45:31 alasiri

Yes look at the numbers for Irish Gaelic too. According to Wikipedia there are c 280 000 native speakers and 1 million users at L2.

Duolingo has 615 000 users learning Irish. That's in less than 1 year since the course was released and less than 6 months out of Beta. They are very significant numbers even if you assume only a small number actually complete the course.

Esperanto has the added bonus that it's relatively easy to learn so hopefully more people will stick with it to completion.

jdawdy (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 28 Aprili 2015 10:33:33 alasiri

20223 as of this moment- so over 1000 people have visited the webpage and signed up to be notified just in the last six hours.

Not sure how many are a result of this topic, or how many are a result of a similar "TIL" post I made on reddit this morning.

altindiefanboy (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 29 Aprili 2015 12:57:20 asubuhi

When comparing the number of people who signed up to be notified of the Esperanto course to that of Norwegian, I think that there are a couple more things to consider (Ukrainian was mentioned as well, but I can at least address Norwegian). Norway has a very high internet penetration rate (96.15% from Internet Live Stats), with nearly 5 million internet users. It has a greater internet presence than I would expect Esperanto's to be.
Of course, with a "hobby" language like Esperanto, it makes sense that speakers would want to keep up to date with the Duolingo course even if they're already fairly fluent; with a national language like Norwegian, however, I doubt that very many native speakers care about the project to the extent of wanting to be updated on it.

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