Does Duolingo have Hokkien?
No. Duolingo has no Hokkien course, and there is no sign one is coming. It doesn't appear in the catalogue under any of the names people search for — Hokkien, Taiwanese, Minnan, or Taigi — and Duolingo has made no announcement about adding it. Out of roughly 40 languages offered to English speakers, exactly one is a Chinese language, and that one is Mandarin.
Worth separating two things before going further, because a lot of people land on this question meaning the other one: Taiwanese Hokkien and Taiwanese Mandarin are different languages, not two versions of the same one. If what you actually want is the Mandarin people speak in Taiwan, our explainer on what separates the two is the place to start, and the last section of this page covers that path.
Which Chinese languages Duolingo actually teaches
For an English speaker, only one: Mandarin, in its mainland-standard form — Simplified characters, Pinyin romanization, and mainland pronunciation. There is no Traditional-character option and no Taiwan variant, which is the subject of our full breakdown of Duolingo's Chinese course.
There is one nuance that trips people up. Duolingo does have a Cantonese course — but it's offered only to speakers of Mandarin Chinese, meaning the course interface and translations are in Mandarin, not English. An English speaker cannot simply open it from the English course list. So from English, Duolingo offers precisely one route into any Chinese language, and it leads to mainland-standard Mandarin.
Why doesn't Duolingo offer Hokkien?
Duolingo has never publicly explained the omission, so anything specific to the company is guesswork. The explanation usually given for Hokkien's absence from big course platforms generally is practical rather than political: Taiwanese Hokkien has largely been transmitted orally, at home and by ear, rather than taught as a written subject in school, and it has no single written standard that everyone agrees on. Some writers use Chinese characters, others use one of several competing romanization systems.
That matters for a platform built the way Duolingo is. Its courses are overwhelmingly text-driven — read a sentence, tap the words, type the translation — and that model needs a settled written form before a single exercise can be authored. A language whose speakers write it several different ways, or mostly don't write it at all, is a genuinely awkward fit for that format. It is not a statement about how many people speak Hokkien: around 80% of Taiwan's population speaks it to some degree.
Where to actually learn Taiwanese Hokkien
Real resources exist, and several of them are free — they're simply not on the big gamified apps. The most complete structured option is Glossika's Taiwanese Taigi course; the strongest reference is Taiwan's own government dictionary. Here's the shortlist worth starting from:
- Glossika — Taiwanese Taigi: the closest thing to a full course. More than 5,000 words and sentences spanning A1 to C1, built on native-speaker audio and sentence-based spaced repetition. Glossika's own site lists the language as free and describes it as "forever free," part of its stated policy of not charging for less-resourced languages.
- MOE Dictionary of Frequently-Used Taiwanese Taigi: Taiwan's Ministry of Education's official free online dictionary, with roughly 25,000 entries. It uses Tâi-lô, the romanization system Taiwan has made official since 2006. One caveat: the definitions are written in Taiwanese Mandarin, so it's most usable once you already read some Mandarin.
- iTaigi (愛台語): a free, community-built word-lookup site. Handy for finding how an everyday word is actually said and which characters go with it — a quick companion to the MOE dictionary rather than a replacement for it.
- Easy Taiwanese Lessons (YouTube): a channel covering Taiwanese Hokkien grammar, vocabulary, and native expressions — useful for hearing the language used naturally rather than read off a card.
- Spoken Hokkien: a beginner's book with accompanying audio, built around speaking and listening rather than writing — a reasonable fit given how much of the language lives in speech.
Pairing one structured source with one reference source works better than hunting for a single app that does everything, because no single Hokkien app currently does.
If it's Taiwanese Mandarin you actually want
That's the language CiaoSpeak teaches — Taiwanese Mandarin, not Hokkien, and we'd rather say that plainly than let the two blur together. CiaoSpeak does not teach Taiwanese Hokkien, and if Hokkien specifically is your goal, the resources above are the honest answer rather than our app.
Plenty of people searching for "Taiwanese" do mean Mandarin as it's spoken in Taiwan, though — Traditional characters, Zhuyin rather than only Pinyin, Taiwan's own vocabulary and accent. That's the gap CiaoSpeak was built for, with structured lessons that are free with no hearts or lesson limits, and an AI conversation teacher that speaks with a Taiwanese accent. Our beginner's guide to learning Chinese lays out that path from scratch, and Taiwanese Mandarin vs. Mainland Mandarin covers exactly what differs.
Frequently asked questions
Does Duolingo have Hokkien?
No. Duolingo has no Hokkien course, and none has been announced. Hokkien doesn't appear in its catalogue under any of its names — Taiwanese, Minnan, or Taigi — and the only Chinese language Duolingo teaches English speakers is Mandarin.
Is there Taiwanese on Duolingo?
No, in either sense of the word. Taiwanese (Hokkien) has no Duolingo course at all, and Duolingo's single Mandarin course is the mainland-standard version — Simplified characters, Pinyin, and mainland pronunciation — rather than the Mandarin actually spoken in Taiwan.
What app can I use to learn Taiwanese Hokkien?
Glossika's Taiwanese Taigi course is the most complete app-style option, covering A1 to C1 with native-speaker audio, and Glossika's own site lists the language as free. For looking words up, Taiwan's Ministry of Education publishes a free official Taigi dictionary of roughly 25,000 entries, and the community site iTaigi is a quick everyday-word lookup.
Is Taiwanese Hokkien the same as Taiwanese Mandarin?
No — they are two different languages, not two accents of one. Taiwanese Hokkien (台語) is a Southern Min language and is not mutually intelligible with Mandarin. Taiwanese Mandarin is Mandarin as it's spoken in Taiwan, written in Traditional characters and usually taught alongside Zhuyin.
Why doesn't Duolingo offer Hokkien?
Duolingo hasn't publicly explained it. The reason usually given is that Taiwanese Hokkien has been passed down orally at home rather than taught in schools, and has no single written standard everyone uses — which makes a large, text-driven course much harder to build than one for Mandarin.