Hace tres años, comencé a aprender español con la aplicación Duolingo. Pero todavía no soy bilingüe. Lo siento!

The fact that I had to double-check the prior sentences with Google Translate should say something about my efforts since July 2016 to learn Spanish in five-minute sessions with the free Duolingo app on my phone and iPad.

And yet getting anywhere in a new language in my late 40s feels pretty good, since the last time I seriously tried to learn another language was in high school.

It may not be much that I can keep up with the Spanish of such U.S. politicians as Tim Kaine and Beto O’Rourke, have a quick conversation with a vendor at a farmers’ market, or get the gist of news reports in Spanish, but at least it’s progress I can measure.

(It helps that Spanish, unlike the French I reached fluency in during college, is easy to hear on the radio/TV/online as well as around the D.C. area, not to mention during Mobile World Congress trips to Spain.)

The other thing I’ve realized about making this app a daily habit–to use a Yahoo-ism that hit buzzword-bingo status during Marissa Mayer’s tenure as CEO–is that with my schedule as it often gets, I appreciate having this little constant each day. Yes, even with Duolingo’s passive-aggressive notifications, the upsells for Duolingo Plus, and the emotional button-pushing from this app’s judgmental green-owl mascot. Cómo se dice “I’ve internalized my own oppression”?