My mom speaks six or seven languages. My kids speak fluent Spanish. My brother gets by in French.

Me, though — I speak only English, to my great regret. Maybe there’s a gene for language learning, but I didn’t get it.

As such, I’m mortified when I travel abroad and butcher the local tongue. Last time we were in Spain, I ordered “Dos bieros, por favor” — and my kids were howling. It’s even worse in France or Italy, where my ignorance of the language is profound.

It’s actually not much fun. I’d love to be able to say at least a few phrases, before asking the inevitable — do you speak English?

If you’re like me and are planning to travel this summer, you may want to look into Babbel, which is on sale right now for just $169.97 (regularly $599).

Babel is a bit more formal than Duolingo, which gamifies language learning, but it gives you a proper grounding in grammar. (Duolingo seems better-suited for a refresher course than starting from scratch.)

The good thing about Babbel is that it comes in bite-size lessons that are easy to do in your spare time, and you can drop in or out as time allows. If you set up a streak and do a little bit every day, you can get pretty good in a few short weeks.

Get a lifetime deal on Babble for $169.97 (offer ends tonight!) before jetting off this summer, and you’ll never suffer the indignity of referring to cerveza as “biero”!

— Leander Kahney, EIC.

P.S. If you’re not looking for language software, we’ve also got hot deals on Windows 11 Pro (price dropped to $24.97, ends today), an AI resume builder, a highly regarded photo editor and a handy PDF editor.

Hot Babbel deal: Learn languages the easy way

Learning a new language can be one of the best ways to open new doors for your personal and professional life.

For a limited time, acclaimed language learning app Babbel is offering lifetime subscriptions for $169.97, a full 71% off.

Learn up to 14 languages

If you’ve never tried to learn a new language before, Babbel makes it easy to jump right in. The lessons incorporate picture-matching, fill-in-the-blanks exercises and conversational snippets that give you multiple ways to memorize keywords and phrases.

Once you’re ready to start using full sentences, the app’s speech-recognition algorithms test your pronunciation so you can confidently speak like a local.

Babbel’s use of speech recognition is widely respected for its ability to help users improve pronunciation and speak more confidently. With consistent practice, you can refine your accent to sound more like a native speaker’s.

Best of all, these lessons are structured to fit any kind of schedule. You can complete them in about 15 minutes at most. And that means even the busiest person can fit in at least one language lesson a day.

Plus, you can save your progress and pick up your study on any connected device. You can even download lessons to tackle on flights or any place you expect to be offline.

Take your pick of any or all of these 14 languages with your subscription: Chinese, Danish, English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

Save on Babbel, the easy way to learn foreign languages

Babbel is the fastest, easiest way to learn a new language. And it works on iOS, macOS, Android and Windows.

Babbel is trusted and used by more than 10 million people around the world. Across hundreds of thousands of reviews, it maintains an impressive 4.6 out of 5 stars on the App Store and 4.5 out of 5 stars on Google Play.

Right now, you can get a lifetime subscription to Babbel for $169.97, down from the usual price of $599. Don’t delay, though. This deal ends today.

Prices subject to change. All sales handled by StackSocial, our partner who runs Cult of Mac Deals. For customer support, please email StackSocial directly.