Duolingo’s $5 “Cuss Like a Local” Pack Turns the Owl Into a Profanity Dealer

The green owl has officially snapped its adorable necktie and gone full sailor‑mouth. For $4.99, the new Cuss Like a Local add‑on promises to teach thirty languages’ worth of premium obscenities—“from Neapolitan grandma slap‑downs to Danish death‑metal screams,” according to the delightfully unhinged trailer featuring the owl flipping the bird in Times Square. PTA groups promptly clutched pearls, TikTok teens smashed the buy button, and Twitter lit up with arguments about whether merde or mierda hits harder in a breakup text.

The curriculum is structured like a spicy tapas menu. Unit 1—¡Hijo de la Gran Cabrón! breaks down regional Spanish insults by spice level, complete with voice notes from an abuela who’s done playing nice. Unit 2—German Compound Curses challenges you to pronounce a 37‑letter word for “guy who hogs the aux cord,” while a pop‑up fun fact explains why Germans file that under “mild.” Grind to Level 10 and you unlock an AR “soap‑in‑mouth” filter that drifts onto your selfie whenever you mis‑conjugate scheiße—the closest thing to gamified guilt therapy.

Classrooms, predictably, descended into chaos. Teachers tried the ancient “phones‑in‑the‑basket” routine; students shouted “Das ist pädagogisch!” in perfect subjunctive and claimed academic immunity. The local school board called UNESCO for backup, but the cultural watchdog merely shrugged—after all, cross‑cultural competency is still cross‑cultural competency, even if it ends with a Balkan grandmother calling you a goat.

The competitive layer is pure dopamine black magic. Leader‑boards now display pixel middle‑fingers instead of stars, and if you ignore your daily practice, the app threatens to auto‑tweet the last rage DM you sent your ex. One poor soul skipped a week and woke up to the owl posting their entire CAPS‑LOCK tirade on the family group chat. Retweets? 14,000. Therapy bill? Pending.

Duolingo’s growth team already leaked the next add‑on: the “Bless Your Heart” Southern English Pack, teaching weaponized niceties that land softer than a buttered biscuit yet cut deeper than a Bowie knife. If you thought a French putain stung, wait until a genteel Zoomer drops “Well aren’t you just precious” with perfect drawl and a pixel halo. Y’all truly ain’t ready.