When people find out I speak Klingon, I am sometimes asked (as I'm
sure you all are) how many people in the world can carry out a
conversation in it. Previously I've given an answer like "about
20-30", which is what the Internet claims. [...]
Following up on a thread I started a decade (!) ago. At the time, we sort-of-confirmed the number of "20-30" people who could carry out a conversation in Klingon. (We didn't really prove it, but we weren't really able to prove there were more, and the range seems in the ballpark.)
Since then, though, I've had several more conversations with people who learned Klingon through Duolingo. I wonder, then, should the number of people who can converse in Klingon be revised to a much higher range? Have others also had conversations with people who learned Klingon through Duolingo, or other means?
(Aside: An interesting observation is that Duolingo speakers have a dialect: because arbitrary vocabulary choices were made in Duolingo where there are equally valid ways to say something, Duolingo speakers will use the words and grammar favoured by the course.)
OTOH, maybe some speakers who were included in the original 20-30 count have dropped out of their interest in Klingon and can't hold a conversation any more.