More Americans Want to Learn Ukrainian Than Ever Amid Russian Invasion

Americans have expressed a desire to learn the Ukrainian language more than ever as interest has spiked since the start of the Russian invasion.

Since the war began on February 24, there has been a major increase globally in the number of people wanting to learn Ukrainian, language-learning app Duolingo reported.

Dr. Cindy Blanco, a senior learning scientist for Duolingo, told Newsweek that globally, "the number of people studying Ukrainian on Duolingo increased 577 percent."

"We kind of see this huge increase from the beginning of February to mid-March," Blanco said.

According to Duolingo, the U.S., where the app has the largest number of users, has the most learners studying Ukrainian.

"In the U.S., the growth of Ukrainian learners increased in a similar way, about 554 percent compared to the start of the war," Blanco said.

With a large number of Ukrainian refugees coming to Poland, interest in learning the language has soared in that country.

"In comparison, when we look at Ukrainian learners in Poland, that spike that growth was even bigger," Blanco said, adding that Ukrainian learners in Poland increased 2,677 percent since the start of the invasion.

"I think it's probably easy for us learners to not see the impact of the war in their day-to-day lives," Blanco said. "But then again, in Poland, we see this peak of learning happened a couple of weeks later as Poland is accepting millions of Ukrainian refugees."

More than 10 percent of Ukraine's total population has left the country since the start of the war. Data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) shows that 4,547,735 people have fled, with 2.6 million going to Poland.

Duolingo, which provides online language lessons for nearly 40 languages, pledged to donate all ad revenue from the people studying Ukrainian to relief funds.

"Since the invasion of Ukraine began, we've experienced a large spike in people learning Ukrainian on Duolingo," CEO Luis von Ahn wrote in a statement on March 14. "While it's wonderful to see that show of support and appreciation for Ukraine's culture, it would not be right for us to profit from it."

He added that Duolingo has disabled "all monetization in Russia and Belarus. This is to ensure that we are not paying any taxes to the Russian government and that we are not selling customers a service that we may be unable to provide in the future."

Duolingo's move to disable monetization was in line with other companies that pulled business out of Russia as the world began to ramp up pressure and economic sanctions in response.

"I think the global growth of interest in Ukrainian tells us something about how much the world cares about the situation," Blanco said, "and how you have more impacting Ukrainian refugees, especially extending the places where they're being evacuated."

Newsweek reached out to Rosetta Stone, which also produces language learning products, for comment.