Welsh language Duolingo course hits 1 million learners

The number of language learners around the world mastering Welsh through the Duolingo app has hit 1 million.

The Welsh for English speakers course, which has been in development since 2015, hit the milestone after being put together by voluntary contributors working together online.

One of the contributors, Jonathan Perry, said that the project had been a great success.

“The team of volunteers is very glad that we’re reached a million learners,” he said.

“The Duolingo app supports learners here in Wales and has allowed hundreds of thousands of people around the world to learn Welsh.

“A thousand people are joining the course every day so we look forward to a growth in awareness of the language, which will be one consequence of the course’s success.”

International users have posted YouTube videos of themselves speaking Welsh after using the course.

The Welsh language had 562,000 speakers in Wales when the last census was carried out in 2011.

Irish is also available on the Duolingo app, and has 4.25m learners after launching in 2014. The most popular language on the app is Spanish with 120 million learners.

Arabic, Hindi and Indonesian will also soon be available.