Representation and diversity matter First, Duolingo believes deeply in diversity and representation. This made it a no-brainer to include all types of characters of different ages, ethnic backgrounds, and sexual orientations. The second reason is our learners.
Gender. Although Lin's gender is unknown, she has been referred to with "she/her" pronouns in the stories and with "they/them" pronouns by the official Spanish Duolingo account.
Lucy is one of the Duolingo main characters who appears in the stories, lessons and other events. She is a canny, vivacious woman of the world, grandmother of Lin.
Duo is a boy. It's okay to refer to him as "he" or "him." Duo mostly stands still. Duo opens up and slightly flaps his wings (if only to get someone's attention).
Zari is a female high school student with brown skin and straight black hair that runs out of her baby-pink-colored headscarf.
If you want to just learn basics of a language and dabble casually, Duolingo is completely fine on its own. If you're determined to master a language though, you should only use Duolingo to get you started and take an actual language program or practice with a native speaker to bring you the rest of the way.
Lily is confirmed to be 16 years old. Lily is implied to be of Spaniard ethnicity and has an Aunt named Tara. Lily really likes pie, as seen when Zari says "surprising facts about Pi", she gets excited thinking Zari was talking about pie.
They look more like buddies or BFFs, who hang out together in a non-romantic way. They are not featured in a blog post about LGBT representation, and in their appearances in a stories, like New student, for example, they are talking about boys.
Most languages on Duolingo have one or two recorded voices for input, and that's it. Some of them even have the audacity to play a robotic monotone artificial voice for you instead.
Bea is bisexual, as she gets a date with Daniel in A Date, and asks to the airport counter in "Where's your girlfriend?" where she can find a girlfriend that is tall, dark skinned, likes to play sports, to dance, really enjoys animals, and eats a lot of chocolate.
"We have three established queer characters: Lin, Bea, and Oscar. Lin dates women, Bea dates both men and women, and Oscar's into men (although he's as discerning with men as he is with his cheeses and pretty much everything else).” Lin, a character on Duolingo representing the LGBTQIA+ community. ( Source: Duolingo)
They look more like buddies or BFFs, who hang out together in a non-romantic way. They are not featured in a blog post about LGBT representation, and in their appearances in a stories, like New student, for example, they are talking about boys.
Our Duolingo writing guide calls for the use of non-gendered language whenever possible. Specifically, we use “they/them” pronouns when referring to our users.
Armenian. In Armenian, neither pronouns nor nouns have grammatical gender. The third person pronoun նա(na) means both he and she, and նրանք (nranq) is for they.
From Duocon 2022:
Lily is confirmed to be 16 years old.
This includes languages like Indonesian, Finnish, Hungarian and Mandarin. These languages still have words that mean “man” or “woman” and other words that designate a natural gender. However they have no pronouns or indicators for male/female in people or objects.
Who is Lily James's boyfriend? James is currently in a relationship with Michael Shuman, a musician and songwriter who plays bass for the rock band Queens of the Stone Age. (Fun fact: Queens of the Stone Age have seven Grammy nominations to their name, including Best Rock Performance and Best Rock Album in 2014.)
In Zari's early design, she's an adult woman that had a coral pink hijab convering her entire hair, a dark gray shirt, a coral pink long skirt, dark gray shoes and a grin as a default expression instead of a smile.
Bea is bisexual, as she gets a date with Daniel in A Date, and asks to the airport counter in "Where's your girlfriend?" where she can find a girlfriend that is tall, dark skinned, likes to play sports, to dance, really enjoys animals, and eats a lot of chocolate.
Flirting is a bonus skill that can be bought in the Lingot store for 30 lingots. Even though it is a skill for the tree, the tree can be finished regardless of whether you complete the skill or not.
Duo is the official mascot of Duolingo. He is a green owl, similar to the spectacled owl species in the real world and is meant to symbolize knowledge, wisdom, and learning.
Eddy is a thirtysomething single dad to his 8-year-old son, Junior. Vikram formerly worked in finance but quit his job to become a baker.
In this image taken from video by Iran's state-run IRNA news agency, Iranian competitive climber Elnaz Rekabi speaks to journalists in Imam Khomeini International Airport in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2022.
You can wear a religious head covering while taking the Duolingo test.