Indian Languages and Language Acquisition Apps
Sameer Abraham Thomas · 2025
Duolingo is a massively popular language learning app offering courses in 39 languages for English speakers. These include European languages like Spanish, German, French and Italian; Asian languages like Japanese and Korean; and even a number of constructed languages like Klingon from Star Trek and High Valyrian from George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire . Noticeably underrepresented are languages originating in the Indian subcontinent with the sole exception of Hindi. This trend is typical of the larger ecosystem of language acquisition apps with the exception of apps produced by Indian developers. Such language politics have direct relevance to the challenges and desires I and others like myself have as Anglophone Indians seeking digital solutions to their alienation from so-called mother tongues. In this chapter, I hope to draw some attention to such questions and offer some tentative answers by examining the language offerings and learning data of a number of language learning apps with a particular focus on Duolingo. By doing so, I examine a number of possible explanations for the underrepresentation of languages originating in the Indian subcontinent and link it most strongly to international demand as shaped by cultural popularity.