Learn new languages through toilet rolls

Duolingo sells language lessons on toilet paper

Only an April Fools’ Day joke? Not at all. Duolingo, the popular site and app for learning languages had a great idea. Everybody knows that learning a new language is not an easy job but the problem is often finding downtime to dedicate to learning a new language, so Duolingo found a great solution: lessons on toilet paper.

We’ve always maintained that the best culture is absorbed when we are sitting on the toilet, reading in total relaxation and without obligation. That’s when we learn better.

So, in a campaign from Wieden & Kennedy Amsterdam (a creative agency partnered with Duolingo), which started out as an April Fool idea but has become a real product, the company started printing language phrases on toilet paper. The Duolingo rolls are available for English speakers learning Spanish, as well as Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, and Portuguese speakers learning English.

The agency has also persuaded WeWork (an American commercial real estate company that provides flexible shared workspaces for technology startups and services for other enterprises), to install toilet paper in 18 of their restrooms in China, while other bathrooms will also carry information about the product. In addition, a number of lucky early adopters will receive the first Duolingo rolls in England, Mexico, Brazil, the U.S., Japan, and China. There will also be a Twitter contest for English speakers to win a roll in Spanish. And if the idea will be successful, it hopes to roll the toilet paper out on a wider scale.

“Duolingo understands that one of the most common barriers to learning a language is how much time it takes”, said Thom Dinsdale, planning director at W&K Amsterdam, in a statement. “However, studies have found that people spend an average of 14 minutes a day sitting on the toilet. Developing a new product to help learners utilize this downtime was a natural extension of its multi-platform offering”.

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So, we can’t wait to learn new languages directly on the toilet, also hoping for new different languages to learn with different skill levels! And when we learned the lesson, we can wipe satisfied!