Request to Add Kurdish (Kurmanji) Language Courses on Duolingo

[RoniTheKurd]

Hello,
We, a growing community of Kurdish speakers and language enthusiasts, would like to formally request the addition of Kurdish (Kurmanji dialect) language courses on Duolingo. Kurdish is spoken by over 30 million people worldwide, and Kurmanji is the most widely used dialect. There is a strong desire among both native speakers and learners to access high-quality, interactive Kurdish language education.

Why Kurdish (Kurmanji) should be added:

1. Large and Engaged User Base: Kurdish speakers live in multiple countries including Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and across the diaspora in Europe and North America. Many are eager to learn or maintain their language skills.
2. Cultural and Linguistic Importance: Kurdish is rich in culture and heritage. Adding Kurmanji courses would help preserve and promote the language globally.
3. Existing Community Support: Several online Kurdish communities already exist on platforms like Facebook, Telegram, and Discord, showing clear demand for Kurdish language learning resources.
4. Technical Feasibility: AI-powered tools and existing language datasets (e.g., Google Translate supports Kurdish) make course creation feasible.

We are ready to support Duolingo by:

• Providing volunteers for content creation, translation, and voice recordings
• Helping build an engaged learner community
• Supplying curated materials, including vocabulary lists and example sentences

Adding Kurdish (Kurmanji) would not only expand Duolingo’s reach but also empower millions of learners to connect with their heritage and language.

We sincerely hope you will consider this request and look forward to contributing to the development of Kurdish courses on Duolingo.

Thank you for your attention and support.

[Thomas.Heiss]

No staff from Duolingo Inc. is around.

The CEO wrote a letter back that they're only focusing on 8 main languages (maybe +1 for Chinese).

Why do people always get the wrong impression that somone from Duolingo Inc. would listen to its users, that you can formally request new languages even though the volunteer contributor program has long ended.

There was a long list of requested languages on the old discussion forum with not much of an affect.
Nowadays it would cost them some money to hire professional contractors to build a new language course.

They're not done with CEFR restructurings or more B1/B2 content in their existing language pair courses.
Many have been abandoned for years.

As I said, they will only focus on 8+1 languages with many ACTIVE learners.

Requesting anything from Duolingo on Duome or Reddit hardly makes any sense.
They often do the exact opposite, like destroying their reverse trees, removing more and more features, making a serious app/website - it had some potential - just a mindless XP grinding game.

Maybe try to find a different platform where they actually support user-created courses, adding vocabulary / phrase lists, some SRS application with a good review system and a proper SR interval,...