Why are Duolingo sentences so quirky?

Apart from an intense green owl overly invested in your language studies, Duolingo's fame is also marked by its infinitely quirky sentences. The creativity levels of its content staff are wild and the sentences that learners are presented with are, more often than not, nonsensical. Picture these as sentences introduced to your linguistic repertoire:

'Πωλείται η γιαγιά?' (Modern Greek - Is grandmother for sale?)

'Je n'ai pas d'argent, je peux payer avec des biscuits?' (French - I don't have money, can I pay with cookies?)

And… perhaps the winner, 'Du sieht (aus) wie meine nächste Freundin' (German -You look like my next girlfriend).

The wide-reaching language learning app has seen huge amounts of criticism for the impracticality of such sentences. Granted, 'you look like my next girlfriend' is a smart one to pick someone up in Austria, but realistically, no, we can't pay for our croissants with biscuits in Nantes. And hopefully, no one would take that first phrase off Duolingo to actually sell their grandmothers in Crete (no matter how desperate they are to fund their Crete holiday).

Examples of the sort–which probably either make you laugh or roll your eyes as a language learner–provide such levels of entertainment that there are now Subreddits and Facebook groups that circle the theme of 'Funny Duolingo phrases'. But the concept doesn't amuse everyone. Influencers, quoting a lack of real-life, practical phrases, have long shown scepticism towards Duolingo's whimsical approach, with many testing out whether extended learning on Duolingo does any good in real life at all.

Does Duolingo prepare you for real-life language use? A case example from influencer Ramiroy, who had been on Duolingo for 600 days learning Russian

Duolingo seems to remain emotionally unscathed, however. After all, as a major influencer in the EdTech landscape, it isn't built without a team of language specialists. Are conventional sentences truly helpful for learning in a way that most don't see, backed by cognitive science?

"... when learners see a strange sentence, their attention is implicitly yet forcefully brought to the structure of a sentence, which brings the learner to draw in knowledge of grammatical structures and vocabulary rather than relying on familiar sentence patterns"

The short answer to that is yes, partially. The most obvious explanation behind the quirks is memorability. When you're presented with a phrase such as 'the crab doesn't have a neck', you're likely to ridicule the sentence over and over again, until words like 'crab' or 'neck' start making their way into your short, and then long-term memory. This approach also gives subtle reinforcement of linguistic analysis–when learners see a strange sentence, their attention is implicitly but forcefully brought to the structure of a sentence, which brings the learner to draw in knowledge of grammatical structures and vocabulary rather than relying on familiar sentence patterns. It is based on the idea that language learning isn't solely about being able to replicate sentences word-for-word in real-life contexts (unlike the old audio-lingual method), but rather to have learners understand that language learning, beyond basic-level conversations, is also about being observational about the elements of a new language.

"Duolingo's nonsensical quirks can also compel language learners to create their own sentences with a guided sentence base."

Unique phrases also set Duolingo apart from the many 'traditional' learning materials that would focus on fixed phrases such as 'where is the bathroom?' or 'how much does this cost?' Fixed phrases as such are undeniably useful for meeting the needs of work and travel, but when sentences are presented in their entirety, learners are mainly left to remember them phonetically with perhaps lesser focus on grammar at beginner level. Duolingo's nonsensical quirks can also compel language learners to create their own sentences with a guided sentence base. That is, instead of 'Πωλείται η γιαγιά?' (Is grandmother for sale?), one would hopefully be inclined to replace 'grandmother' with another more humane noun already in the learned word bank 'Πωλείται αυτό το αυτοκίνητο?' (Is this car for sale?).

Whether or not these arguments convince the sceptics, it is fair to say that Duolingo alone may not meet the needs or preferences of all learners, and learners are of course free to explore a range of materials more fitting with their values and preferred styles. Despite the whispers, Duolingo is still one of the world's most widely used language learning apps. Whether it be because of Duo Owl's marketing magic, the company's approach to making language learning free, or its linguistic quirks, something seems to be working for Duolingo. Maybe subconsciously for some, quirky may be the key after all.

The author of this article has no employment history at Duolingo and is not sponsored by the company.