Right, I was halfway through a lesson last night – on learning language hell app DuoLingo – when the voice suddenly changed. There was no warning, no option, no pop-up with the stupid owl telling me what was about to happen. It just CHANGED. The voice went from a clear, albeit sort of robotic, woman’s voice to a man’s. He sounds obnoxious, like a car salesman who thinks you might be better off on a razor scooter. The audio isn’t even good quality either, it’s all muffled and distorted. I know the mission of DuoLingo, and Duo the owl, is to strip all meaning from your life until you’re bashing your head against a wall screaming “She likes oranges and apples” in Spanish and Japanese, but this is too far, Duo – too fucking far.
I only woke up once this week whispering “fuck” at my ceiling, so I thought I was doing fine. Isolation is a cruel mistress, but it is what it is et cetera, et cetera. But this has tipped me over the edge, so instead of just letting this go like a normal human being would, I spent an hour trying to figure out how to switch the voice back (you can’t) and if Duo has hooted about this on Twitter recently (he hasn’t).
From what I can tell, the change rolled out over the past month or so, affecting Romanian, Italian, Indonesian, German, French, and Greek students to name a few.
Exhibit A: Demi841243 screamed “WHY DID THE VOICE CHANGE?” on the official DuoLingo forums, dated April 15.
Other users agreed, adding complaints that the new robotic bloke pronounces words differently. One moderator replied and explained that “Duo is testing some new audio programs”, and said glitches would be fixed within reason. Vague. An email would’ve been nice… to go along with the 1,400 other ones Duo sends daily. But what would I know!
Now here’s what I liked about the original voice: she shouted the words. I’ve been learning Indonesian for 261 days now and for 260 of those days, the woman – who I’ll call Pam – shouted at me until phrases stuck. I got used to Pam. I even shouted back “GOOD MORNING” on most days. Now it’s just dog shit. He sounds like Google Translate and speaks too fast.
For those new to DuoLingo, Pam is depressingly a legend lost to time.
It’s delightful knowing I’m not alone, that there are dozens of others with the same complaint. In fact, there are numerous threads online about the voice change, none more relatable than this entry*.
*Not actually, because that would mean letting Duo win. So what now? I don’t know. I sort of just wanted to whinge for a couple of hundred words on a Friday arvo. But knowing people are making noise about the voice change makes me think Pam will some day return. That one day I’ll clock on and Pam will shout “HALO” to me again. All will be well.
