The Witcher is a large IP spanning anime, books, comics, a sequence of video games (and cameos in battle royale shooter Fortnite and 3D brawler SoulCalibur VI), and a tv sequence on Netflix. The franchise’s lead, Geralt of Rivia, has journeyed far past the expectations that fantasy writer Andrzej Sapkowski would possibly’ve had when he printed the primary Witcher story again in 1990. Now, the sequence has even popped up on the language-learning app Duolingo.
You learn that proper. There’s a Witcher reference in Duolingo, the identical app you would possibly use to choose up some French vocabulary forward of a trip, or brush up on the Spanish you realized in highschool. Within the official Witcher subreddit, person GeraltAndYennefer seen one thing peculiar a couple of query they obtained within the app’s Finnish course. Duolingo requested the redditor to translate the phrase: “The bride is a lady and the groom is a hedgehog.” Puzzled by the specificity of the request, GeraltAndYennefer plainly requested in r/witcher if it was a reference to Sapkowski’s profitable fantasy sequence.
In response to IGN, it’s. The publication obtained affirmation from a Duolingo spokesperson that the road factors to A Query of Worth, a brief story Sapkowski wrote within the 1993 anthology assortment The Final Want. It was tailored into the fourth episode of The Witcher’s first season on Netflix, “Of Banquets, Bastards and Burials,” which tells the story of how Ciri grew to become Geralt’s “daughter.”
“Duolingo is considerably infamous for odd and humorous sentences in our programs, however there’s actual studying worth behind them,” the spokesperson stated. “And at instances we’ve intentionally inserted anime, gaming, or different popular culture references into our content material, to assist join language studying with folks’s passions and pursuits.”
The Duolingo spokesperson specified to Kotaku in an electronic mail that The Witcher reference was “inserted by one of many Finnish course contributors round 2019.”
A Query of Worth and “Of Banquets, Bastards and Burials,” takes us again fairly a number of years to earlier than the Lion Cub of Cintra was even born. The story recounts the occasions of Ciri’s precise mother and father, Princess Pavetta and Duny. To not spoil an excessive amount of right here, Duny’s troubled with a curse that transforms him right into a hedgehog monster (consider Sonic’s werehog type from 2008’s Sonic Unleashed), which sends him into an uncontrollable rage at night time. Being the monster-negotiator and -slayer that he’s, Geralt reveals as much as save the day, and Princess Pavetta and Duny the Hedgehog change into fortunately engaged, which is how Ciri and Geralt’s destines change into so entwined.. It’s a candy love story made even sweeter by the stunning immortalization in a language-learning app.
There’s numerous Witcher at the moment within the works proper now. Some experiences recommend that filming for Season 4 of the Netflix sequence started this month, with Liam Hemsworth changing Henry Cavill as The Witcher and Laurence Fishburne becoming a member of the forged, too. There’s additionally a brand new trilogy of video games within the oven, with developer CD Projekt Purple ramping up manufacturing by placing over 400 folks on the venture. Geralt of Rivia, the ever-busy monster hunter, is getting busier.
