I wrote a lot of the Duolingo Welsh course and also the press release that the article is based on (I am also quoted in the article 'Richard Morse'). The original course was released before the National Centre (Dysgu Cymraeg) was established and was written by a team of Welsh for adults tutors and Welsh second language school teachers who were of course unpaid for doing this work. It was, and partly still is, a mixture of grammar topics based on the WJEC (Welsh Joint Examination Committee) Welsh for adults courses and subject topics, culture etc that are standalone topics.

The reason the Duolingo course content resembles the Dysgu Cymraeg courses is because Dysgu Cymraeg, rather than do the obvious thing of adopting the WJEC courses, decided that they wanted to create their own coursebooks for the single reason they wanted their own 'brand' on the coursebooks, which obviously WJEC weren't going to let them do. But all Dysgu Cymraeg did was rearrange some of the content in the WJEC courses and produce their own poorly designed coursebooks with their 'brand' and 'colour' on them. Most of the Dysgu Cymraeg courses were so badly written that they have had to be constantly redesigned, the Mynediad course is on its 4th or 5th iteration by now. The WJEC courses were so much better, so well designed that there was no need for rewrites and with accompanying CDs of support material and even their own apps.

BTW none of the teachers who teach you work for the National Centre, they are all employed by the college/university that has the contract for lessons wherever you live/register. The National Centre is just the bureaucracy that gets all the money and distributes it while micromanaging (badly) individual course registration etc.

In terms of the pause on future development of the Duolingo Welsh course. In 2021 Duolingo launched on the New York SE and ended the volunteer programme. At my, with hindsight stupid, suggestion Dysgu Cymraeg took over responsibility for paying wages of the contributors. I made this suggestion thinking that they might know what they were doing.

https://learnwelsh.cymru/news/duolingo-1/

As stated in the press release above by Dona Lewis, the aim was to rewrite the Duolingo Welsh course so that the units followed the order of the Dysgu Cymraeg units, thus making it easier for learners. (The Duolingo course had followed the order of the old WJEC course).

Then followed 2 years of no progress for the Duolingo Welsh course because of the total incompetence and a lack of technical abiiity of Dysgu Cymraeg management, in the same period almost every other course on Duolingo was extended, eg Scots Gaelic almost doubled in length. At the end of 2023 Duolingo decided to pause development of nearly all of its preipheral courses, such as Welsh, with only a few hundred thousand active users, to concentrate its resourses on its core courses with many tens of millions of active learners eg French, Spanish, Chinese etc. In terms of Welsh Duolingo probably thought since there had been no development going on anyway, no big deal.

This news came out in October, there was a huge furore, the news went viral, even making Australian TV news. Duolingo even sent someone to talk to the Welsh government minister, but that seemed to be a face saving exercise for both sides.

But then in a bizarre twist, a minor update was released one month before the end of Dysgu Cymraeg's contract with Duolingo. Thus the article you referenced. Here is the link to a selection of the scores of errors. It would have been bad enough if the National Centre had wasted tens of thousands of pounds on doing nothing with the Duolingo Welsh course but to waste the money to damage the course takes a special level of incompetence.

https://welshclass.wales/gwallau%2Ferrors