Both Babbel and Rosetta Stone have deals going right now.

Babbel, $199 for a lifetime subscription. Deal good through September 15th.

https://www.popsci.com/sponsor...ent/babbel-app-sale/

Rosetta Stone for $179, through September 4th. More languages than Babbel.

https://www.rosettastone.com/

I'd like to brush up on my Spanish. I took four years in high school and have forgotten so much of it. And I've always wanted to learn German and Russian.

We'll see how it goes....

I bought us Babbel for Christmas year before last. Spanish. I am good at languages but I found this program unintuitive and therefore didn't retain much. It suited Mr. Pique well. I think the type of learner you are makes a difference as to which program will work better for you.

So, my suggestion is see if you can get a tryout for 30 days or something.

I took Spanish in high school and forgot all of it. Then I spent a year working with a Guatemalan guy and got it all back - to the point where I spent an entire weekend speaking Spanish with native speakers and didn’t get lost.

And now I’ve lost most of it again.

There’s an article in today’s WaPo (I’d link it but it’s paywalled) that talks about swapping your bucket list for a chuck-it list. My staying fluent in Spanish is like that - more stress than value.

As is becoming proficient on the piano.

I've been doing Duolingo in Spanish for a year. The vocabulary and grammar pile up pretty effortlessly, a little at a time. To really be able to use it, I'd need to find a conversation group, and I probably will eventually, but I feel like I'm learning a lot for now.

It was so encouraging to feel like I really was learning by investing a tiny bit of time every day, that I decided to set a piano goal. (Not that I am able to pursue it as consistently as I have the Duolingo.

I want to be able to improvise more at the piano, so I started just sitting down and running through the II-V-I chord progression in all the keys. Then I tried some different voicings. At the moment, I'm working on throwing in some seconds and fifths at appropriate times.

Will this help me if I try to improvise or play from lead sheets? I have no idea, but it can't hurt.

Heck. Maybe I'll do something really radical and work on my scales.

quote:

There’s an article in today’s WaPo (I’d link it but it’s paywalled) that talks about swapping your bucket list for a chuck-it list.

I think this is it:

https://www.sentinelsource.com...76-c22575516e51.html

quote:

It was so encouraging to feel like I really was learning by investing a tiny bit of time every day

I adopted this strategy after reading Atomic Habits. Small changes, piggybacked onto something else. Works for me!