WEBVTT

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It's a big world out there.

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Billions of us trying to live, love, prosper,

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and make sense of our brief time on this planet.

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Since the dawn of humanity, we've been passing

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information from one person to another through

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a common language.

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Unfortunately, you can't communicate with others

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without knowing or learning their language first.

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A similar issue is manifested on the web where

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text can be penned in dozens of different languages,

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each of which demands a reader's fluency.

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We've developed an elegant solution to both

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problems -- a way for you to learn a language for

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free, while at the same time helping to translate

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text from the web, enabling a wealth of

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language-shackled information to be liberated for

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all of humanity. It's called "duolingo".

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Here's how it works: Let's say you're a native

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English speaker who wants to learn Spanish.

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We start by giving you a sentence from a Spanish

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web site and asking you to translate it.

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Wait. Back up.

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How can you translate a language you don't know?

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First, duolingo only gives you sentences that fit

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your language level. Beginners get the really simple

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sentences from the web and advanced users get the

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more complex ones.

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This way, everybody becomes a valuable translator.

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And second, if you're really lost, you can always

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see possible translations for words you don't know.

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Afterwards, duolingo helps you understand and

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memorize the words you hovered over through

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educational examples.

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You can also vote on the quality of other students'

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translations, which helps you learn by seeing how

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others translated the same sentence.

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And because you create valuable translations while

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you learn, we return the favor by offering duolingo

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completely free of charge: no ads, no hidden fees,

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no subscriptions. Just free.

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To put the potential benefit of duolingo into

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perspective, think about this: if one million

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people would use duolingo to learn, the entirety

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of English Wikipedia could be translated to Spanish

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in just 80 hours.

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Duolingo: Learn a language while translating the web.