Gina Gotthilf, vice president of growth, at Duolingo joined Cheddar to discuss the launch of its Chinese course, the most asked of course since Duolingo's launch in 2011.
She said it's taken the company so long to launch the course because the app wasn't designed to teach characters and "tones", which are the fundamentals of the Chinese language.
The lessons are based on themes like greetings, food, travel, sports, business/finance, culture and even Chinese internet slang.
Gotthilf says one of the reasons Duolingo has taken off is because of the "gamifying" aspect of learning. It aims to make using the app in line for coffee, on the train to work, or waiting for a flight is fun and quick. People can learn at their own pace while being entertained in the process, she said.
The company has raised total of $108.3 million in funding and is currently valued at $700 million. The future plans aren't to keep adding new languages, but to increase the efficiency of the courses already launched. So far, 200 million subscribers have started learning a new language.
A Delta Air Lines plane has flipped upon arrival at Toronto’s Pearson Airport and ended up on its roof, injuring 18 people.
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
Japanese automakers Honda, Nissan and Mitsubishi are dropping their talks on business integration.
