How Duolingo created a Yiddish course with a secular scholar and Hasidic Jews from Brooklyn
April 1, 2021
5:01 pm
Duolingo's "flag" for the Yiddish course showcases an aleph with a "komets" diacritic, a foundational Yiddish letter. (Duolingo)
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(JTA) — 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.