A Hasidic family in Borough Park, Brooklyn. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – Duolingo, the world’s most popular language-learning platform, launched a Yiddish course on Tuesday.

The site teaches Yiddish through game-like lessons that take five to seven minutes a day. Lessons and exercises are adapted to the user’s learning style, and students are tempted to stay motivated by earning virtual coins, unlocking new levels and watching their “fluency score” rise as they master a new language.

According to Duolingo, some 10,000 students have already signed up to learn Yiddish.

Meena Viswanath, whose family includes a number of prominent Yiddish scholars, was the project’s expert in blending academic Yiddish with the everyday vernacular spoken by Jews worldwide, primarily Chassidic Jews whose roots go back to Eastern Europe.