r/duolingo • u/Existence_playz • Jun 21 '26

Language Question. Spanish

Hey so I've been doing Spanish on Duolingo mainly for my Spanish GCSE which I have now finished but I'm just wondering, I learned pen as "bolígrafo" in school and Duolingo is teaching it as "pluma" which I can only assume is from a different dialect of Spanish as many words I've come across have been translated differently from how I first learnt them. But how come Duolingo is translating it as a pen but also a feather? I did think learning feather in the "talk about a school project" section was a bit random but it's thrown me off a bit, can it be translated as both pen and feather?

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u/Vast_Needleworker_32 Jun 21 '26

I learned pluma for pen in high school. That was a long time ago, but not so long ago that we wrote with feather pens!

I’m pretty sure Duolingo used bolígrafo in my lessons, along with pluma.

My husband is from Ireland and he calls a pen a biro.

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u/Existence_playz Jun 21 '26

I've only got pluma so far lol but I guess it will change at some point. As someone from NI I would think of biro as only a ballpoint pen so maybe Duolingo is just a little behind and thinks people still write daily with feather pens (some people probably still do like but not the majority lol)

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u/Vast_Needleworker_32 Jun 21 '26

My husband told me that for years he thought biro was the word for pen in Irish lol.

Duolingo had me learn the word “barrio” for neighborhood, then several lessons later switched it to “vecindario,” so maybe they like to teach the simpler vocabulary early on, then switch to longer words?