The story of why DuoLingo offers a multitude of language lessons for free is very interesting, and is explained in this fascinating TED talk about captchas. Regardless of the goal of the overall project, millions of people are learning languages for free and they get to keep that knowledge forever and do with it what they please. Don and I are two of those people and we have decided to learn Esperanto.
Esperanto is a constructed language, created by a Polish Jew named L.L. Zamenhof. His vision was to create an easy to learn language that could unite the world by serving as the ultimate international language of the world. Until now, only a relatively few people had access to learning anything about this language, much less even heard of it. It's fun to learn and the community is very friendly as well.
We are now nearing the completion of the DuoLingo "tree" of lessons and can have beginner conversations using the language. We practice a little every day online and with each other and it's going very well.
In my enthusiasm for my new culture, I've created a few Zazzle product designs to help celebrate Esperanto and offer a unique way to discover other Esperantists or start conversations and gain interest in this great language, which is growing in popularity by the day. Please take a look and feel free to share and buy my designs so I can make a few pennies here and there. I hope to create more designs in the future.
Take a look at the DuoLingo site and sign up to learn Esperanto or any other language. There are many, many options available, and developers are working on more options all the time, so keep checking back if the one you want isn't available just yet.
Ĝis la revido, amikoj!
