In nearly eight years of covering Yiddish events for the Forverts, I have never seen anything approaching the level of excitement accompanying the release of Duolingo’s Yiddish course, which will go live Tuesday, April 6. Ever since work began on the course five years ago, reddit, Twitter, Facebook and Duolingo’s own forums have been inundated with inquiries verging on demands from Yiddish lovers, language nerds and Duolingo superfans wanting to know when it will be ready. 9,500 students have already signed up. When Duolingo announced that the big day would come in April, several people posted on reddit that they were so excited they couldn’t sleep. Not being one of the Duolingo’s 300 million users myself and knowing little about the free software besides occasionally seeing its mascot Duo, a spunky passive-aggressive owl, pop up in internet memes, I wanted to find out what the hype was about. So when a press agent asked if I would like to speak with the Yiddish course creators I not only jumped at the opportunity but put in a special request: to be given advance access to the course. Here’s what I found over eight hours of taking it for a test drive.