Either it’s about Squid game Where kawaii culture, fascination with Korea and Japan fuel a boom in East Asian language learning. Japanese is the fastest growing language in the UK this year on the online platform Duolingo, and Korean is the fourth fastest language.

Most of the interest is driven by cultural issues, the firm said in its Duolingo 2021 linguistic report, which will be released tomorrow and analyzes how its platform’s 20 million downloads are being used.

Established elements of Japanese popular culture, such as Pokémon and video games, have been joined by a worldwide increase in the popularity of cartoons such as Dragon Ball and My Hero Academia.

Duolingo said 26% of language learners had been influenced by key cultural moments, such as the Tokyo Olympics and Euro 2020, and by TV shows such as Squid game, which saw a 76% increase in Korean learners after its launch in September. One-third of learners said they chose to watch a movie or TV program in another language.

Globally, Japanese has overtaken Italian to become the fifth most popular language in 2021.

Jun Jinushi, executive director of the London office of the National Tourism Organization of Japan, said the number of people traveling from the UK to Japan hit an all-time high before the pandemic struck.

“We have certainly felt the growing interest in Japan and Japanese culture over the past few years,” he said, citing the 2019 Rugby World Cup and TV shows such as Joanna Lumley’s Japan, James May: Our man in Japan and Tom Daley goes global.

“There may also be something to be said about the ubiquity of Japanese food on British menus, and a generation of children who have fallen in love with now adult Japanese pop culture and are re-appreciating the country and language that gave them the likes of Pokémon, Super Mario and Studio Ghibli.

Spanish, French, German, English and Italian are the most popular languages ​​on Duolingo in the UK, followed by Japanese and Welsh, the fastest growing language last year .

Welsh remains popular, according to Colin Watkins, the company’s UK national director. “We’re almost two million learners, which I think we’ll get past before Christmas,” he said.

“The growing popularity of Asian languages, driven by interest in Asian culture, indicates a fundamental shift in learners’ motivations and a real shift in what the UK wants to learn. “