Duolingo launched its new Haitian Creole course for English speakers. The course provides language learners the opportunity to learn the revolutionary language of the first Black independent nation spoken by more than 12 million people, while discovering the culture of the Haitian people. To promote the new course, Duolingo is partnering with several Haitian-run restaurants around the US - including Grandchamps in Brooklyn and Manjay Restaurant in Miami - to give away a free month of Duolingo Plus, the app's premium subscription service, to customers who patronize a participating restaurant, giving them the opportunity to practice their Haitian Creole with fun phrases like ‘Sa k pase?'

(What's up?). One of the large Haitian communities in America is in Miami. In fact, Haitian Creole is the city's third most spoken language so Duolingo is challenging Miami Mayor Francis Suarez to learn the language and keep a 30-day streak of Duolingo lessons in the new course in exchange for a $30,000 donation to Haitians in Tech, a Miami-based organization that provides aspiring and established Haitian technologists with resources to grow in their careers.

Developing the Haitian Creole course came with a unique set of challenges due to the historically spoken nature of the language, which began to be more widely used by enslaved people from the sixteenth to seventeenth century and became a national language when the island of Saint Domingue (present-day Haiti) revolted to become the first independent Black republic. A lack of formal teaching of Haitian Creole until the late 1980s created a mostly spoken language, with few formal writing or explicit grammar rules. Florida International University (FIU) Haitian Creole Professor Nicolas “Tiko” Andre, a leading expert in Haitian Creole and founding member of the Creole Academy in Haiti, along with former graduate students and a cohort of Haitian Creole professors and experts, partnered with Duolingo to develop the new course and describe grammar rules.