At its annual Duocon conference on Friday, Duolingo announced several updates for the language-learning app. Among them is a family plan, which gives up to six people access to Duolingo Plus with a single subscription.
The plan includes benefits like unlimited hearts (so you can keep learning for longer after making mistakes) and an option to keep your lesson streak going if you happen to miss a day. Subscribers won't see any ads in the app either. New features include a hub where you can review all of your mistakes and a more advanced Legendary Level to put your language skills to the test.
The family plan costs around $120 per year, but there's no monthly payment option. The standard plan is $80 per year or $13/month. You can add accounts on shared devices with ease and follow your family members to see their progress.
In addition, Duolingo is hoping to make it easier for users to learn languages with non-Latin based alphabets, such as Japanese, Korean, Russian, Greek, Arabic and Hindi. The company says it has built new kinds of exercises to help folks get to grips with the character-based languages.
Meanwhile, five more languages are coming to the app soon: Haitian Creole, Zulu, Xhosa, Tagalog and Maori. Duolingo worked with South African organization Nal'ibali on the Zulu and Xhosa courses.
“For years, we’ve been working to elevate the status of South African languages by creating and distributing high-quality stories for children," Nal’ibali COO Katie Huston said in a statement. "Partnering with Duolingo to create these courses is another step towards elevating and protecting our local languages, and sharing them with new audiences around the world."
Duolingo is also working on an app that teaches elementary-level math. The app will harness the same tech the company uses for language learning and it should emerge next year. On top of that, Duolingo is upgrading the BirdBrain AI learning system. It says the AI will create personalized lessons at the correct difficulty level.