I'm not tech savvy, but I think "Beta" indicates that the program is still in developing stages. In other words, it is overall a fine product to use, but there are still some kinks that could be worked out.

Thank you skylarskylar for bringing this up. Duolingo, can you let us know approximately how much longer until Brazilian Portuguese is out of Beta? Muito Obrigado!!!

He's the CEO, the big man, head honcho, god of Duolingo.

I now know who you are, and you are pretty damn awesome.

Yes, I totally agree. There are still so many errors in the upper lessons that the system is nearly unusable.

I agree. Duolingo is great but I would not consider Italian to be out of "beta" just yet.

I agree. It's beyond frustrating.

I don't think the voice has changed.

I took a semester of French almost 20 years ago and still remember enough to carry on a rough conversation. I took it my last semester of college getting a BA in Spanish and found it VERY easy since it is similar grammatically and has several cognates. The pronunciation is way different, but like Spanish, follows rules (unlike English). I am studying Italian now and picking it up pretty quickly despite the fact that this ol' brain learns a little slower now :P I read once that Italian is closer to Spanish than Portuguese and would have to concur, at least from having heard both spoken here and there in movies and real life, I barely understand any of the Portuguese and pick up a lot of Italian (this before studying it now). I have a good friend who is not only native Italian, but is a professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Yale and her assessment is that Spanish and Italian are very close, but that Italian grammar is more complex. She notes that native Italians learn Spanish much more easily than native Spanish-speakers learn Italian. I would say with my very cursory studies of Italian that she is correct. I hope this helps!

Hi, all Romance languages are rather similar to each other. Italian and Portuguese are closest to Spanish. This can be a good thing if your main goal is to aquire reading and listening comprehension skills (as it is for me). Learning new vocab and understanding grammar is pretty cheap. But it's a disadvantage if you mainly aim at actively (and correctly) expressing yourself in these languages. Grammar rules are similar but distinct. If you study them simultaneously, this can easily become very confusing if you're not already very proficient in Spanish.