I won't speak on that course cuz that's not my nation or language, but let's just say that I wouldn't want a duolingo Lakota course. There's a couple reasons for this which I'll number and put below. https://twitter.com/CardioLeo/status/1391482420277379074

1. In regards to learning languages: I don't think that Duolingo is particularly a positive development in language learning. I don't like gamification, and I don't think duolingo pushes people past the beginner stages, which is what we need.

The app gives a set path and forces you on that path. You're only able to escape from it if you pay, and payment shouldn't be required to learn your language. Gamification also just doesn't encourage the routine that needs to be established to effectively learn a language.

Learning a language requires you to be with *interesting, comprehensible input* every day. That means elders' life stories, Iktómi stories, etc. Duolingo simply asks you to put "háŋska/kiŋ/igmú/líla" in the right order and gives you points for that. That's not learning.

These sort of gamified systems make language learning into an addictive activity centered around points, not a community activity centered around stories, connections, and relatives. In many cases, it hinders growth. It gives people the wrong idea of what language learning is.

All in all, I just don't like the model that duolingo gives. I think that it doesn't produce fluent speakers, and it also doesn't encourage people to want to become fluent. It's a product meant to make money, not a relative there to help.

2. I don't like non-Lakota having access to the language so readily. I don't mind non-Lakota learning the lang. But very often, when I talk with non-Lakota who wanna learn it, it's because "the grammar's so interesting" or "Native American people are so strong and resiliant."

I think both of those points of view dilute the language. If someone wants to learn Lakota, it should be to form a relationship with the community, a real relationship, and not just to walk around saying, "Oh yeah, I speak (broken) Lakota."

2.5 I saw a tweet by someone reacting to the Xiaoma video, and they said, "He's gonna [get hate] because everyone wants to gatekeep our lang and hate seeing anyone outside of us knowing it, and it will only ensure our language [dies]."

I'd like to respond to this. What many people don't understand is that Xiaoma, and people that learn through duolingo, do not keep with the language. Having 500,000 beginners learning Diné Bizaad (or Lakota) will not save the language.

Languages are community. If there's a club of 500 non-Lakota learning the language in Hartford, Connecticut, they'll make zero impact on the language learning community of Standing Rock. If the explosion of learning isn't in community, revitalization won't happen.

Duolingo doesn't encourage in-community education because it's not controlled by the oyate/people. That makes it ineffective as an educational tool, but also makes it dangerous in the long-term.

(Dangerous because; French isn't owned by a single corporation. There's too many people who speak it, it's just impossible to centralize. Not so with Indigenous languages, which may only have 10 sources max, if they're lucky. They can be centralized by one non-Native corp easily)

To rap it all up, if making a Lakota course on duolingo would stunt learners through gamified learning, endanger the language by giving it to a corporation, and expose it to people who only see it as a toy, why put it on there? That's what I think about that.