The language-learning app Duolingo has seen a startling increase in Mandarin learners in the U.S. compared to this time last year, a spokesperson for the app told HuffPost on Thursday.
The number of people learning Mandarin on the app between Dec. 1 and Jan. 13, compared to that period the prior year, grew 216%, the rep said. For comparison, the number of people studying Spanish, one of the most popular languages to learn in the U.S., grew 40%.
The increased interest in Mandarin comes as TikTok is expected to shut down in the U.S. on Sunday unless the Supreme Court or President Joe Biden’s administration intervenes — or President-elect Donald Trumpissues an executive order to stop the ban after his inauguration on Monday.
In the meantime, TikTok users have started migrating to Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote, a Chinese social media app that is similar to TikTok. RedNote was the No. 1 free app being downloaded in the App Store on Thursday. TikTok users have spent their last few days on the app posting about joining RedNote and creating community with its Chinese users.
“First of all, the Chinese are so nice, they’re so sweet and so welcoming,” one user posted on TikTok. “They’ve over here teaching us Mandarin.”
Duolingo even joined in with a TikTok post translating common internet slang, like “My Shayla” and “raw, next question,” from English to Mandarin.
TikTok users have also been mourning the impending end of the app, joking that they have to say goodbye to their Chinese spy, a joke referring to U.S. lawmakers’ concerns that TikTok’s Chinese parent company is stealing Americans’ data.
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“And to my Chinese spy, thank you for your service,” one TikTok user posted. “If we don’t get to hang out anymore, I just wanna thank you for the good times we’ve had. I just know it was you looking out for me and sending me those tarot readers telling me he was no good for me because there’s no other reason for them to show up. There was no hashtags.”