No: Duolingo has no Yoruba course, from English or any other language. Where to learn Yoruba instead, why the tone marks matter, and your first words.
Author: QlangoPublished: 3 min read
No, Duolingo doesn't have Yoruba. There is no Yoruba course on Duolingo for English speakers, and none from any other language either: we read Duolingo's full course catalogue on 1 November 2026, and Yoruba isn't in it.
A disclosure: we make Qlango, a language app that teaches Yoruba, so we have an interest here. The Duolingo fact above is plain fact, and you can check it yourself on Duolingo's course list.
No. The African languages Duolingo teaches are Swahili and Zulu. Both are Bantu languages from East and Southern Africa; Yoruba is a West African language from a different branch, spoken mainly in southwest Nigeria and in Benin and Togo. Neither course will help you understand Yoruba. Babbel and Busuu don't offer Yoruba either (checked November 2026).
Qlango teaches Yoruba at A1 and A2, the first two levels of the CEFR scale. At A1 you introduce yourself, greet people and handle simple, familiar phrases. By the end of A2 you can talk about your family, work and daily life in simple sentences and get through routine exchanges.
A lesson works like this. You get a set of short example sentences in Yoruba with the translation in the language you learn from, and you answer them in different ways, such as flashcards, picking one of two answers, matching pairs, putting scrambled words in order and writing the translation yourself. When you finish a lesson, it comes back after one, two, four and eight days and then once more, and any example you needed a hint for returns in harder questions later.
You also choose the language you learn from, so it can be English or your own native language. If you grew up abroad in a Yoruba-speaking family and understand a fair amount but never learned to read or write it, the same course works for you.
Yoruba has three tones, high, mid and low. An acute accent marks a high tone, a grave accent a low tone, and no mark means mid. Dots under letters change the vowel itself: ẹ is an open "e", as in "bed", and ọ is an open "o", close to the "aw" in "law". Written without any of these marks, oko could be four different words:
| Written | Meaning |
|---|---|
| ọkọ | husband |
| ọkọ̀ | vehicle: car, boat, canoe |
| ọkọ́ | hoe |
| oko | farm |
You'll see plenty of Yoruba written without marks, in messages and on signs. Native readers fill them in from context; a learner can't yet, so learn every word with its marks and its melody. That takes repetition more than explanation, because you're memorising sounds as well as spellings.
The good news is the grammar. There's no grammatical gender and no case endings, and verbs don't change for person: Mo lọ is "I went", O lọ is "you went" and Ó lọ is "he went" or "she went".
| Yoruba | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Ẹ káàárọ̀ | good morning, to an elder or to several people |
| Báwo ni? | how are you? (casual) |
| Ẹ ṣé | thank you, respectful; O ṣé to a friend or someone younger |
| Bẹ́ẹ̀ni | yes |
| Rárá | no |
| Ó dàbọ̀ | goodbye |
Respect is grammar in Yoruba: you address elders with ẹ instead of o, and a breezy greeting to someone's grandmother lands badly. Our full guide to learning Yoruba covers the alphabet, the tones and a plan for your first month.
No. As of November 2026, Duolingo has no Yoruba course from English or from any other language.
It depends on what you need. If you want a course organised by CEFR level with a fixed review schedule, Qlango teaches Yoruba at A1 and A2. Duolingo, Babbel and Busuu don't offer Yoruba (checked November 2026).
Qlango is free to download on iPhone and Android, and you can start your first Yoruba lesson without creating an account. It also works in your browser.
We can't say. Duolingo adds and removes courses over time, so check its catalogue if you're reading this much later.
Yoruba isn't the only gap. See every language Duolingo doesn't teach, or compare Qlango and Duolingo side by side. Your first Yoruba lesson in Qlango takes about five minutes.
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