The Language App I Used to Prep for a Month Across Spain

Last year, my college friend group did something we’d been talking about forever: we all took a month off and went backpacking through Spain. Between jobs, time zones, and life in general, we hadn’t all been in the same place for more than a long weekend in years. However, one of our friends, Pedro, grew up in Cordoba and had always said, “You have to come visit!” and we finally took him up on it.

The plan was to start in Barcelona, stay with Pedro’s family, and then travel north. I was excited, until I realized how much we’d be relying on him to translate. I didn’t want to spend the entire trip nodding blankly or tapping him on the shoulder every time I needed to ask where the bathroom was. If we were going to be there for a whole month, I wanted to actually engage with the culture, not just pass through it. So I decided to try picking up a bit of Spanish on my own.

The only problem was I didn’t want to blow part of my travel budget on a monthly subscription to Duolingo or Babbel. With flights, hostels, and travel insurance, I needed to save where I could. I figured I’d just wing it with YouTube until our friend Clara mentioned she was using an app called Mondly she got through something called Dealify. She had always been pretty good at finding affordable options for things you might otherwise pay an arm and a leg for, but even this sounded too good to be true. One time payment and no recurring fees.

But she had been using it for months to brush up on her French and swore by it. I looked it up and realized Dealify is a curated marketplace for lifetime software deals. Not to mention they have a 30-day money back-guarantee, which gave me some peace of mind. Think tools for productivity, design, marketing, and yes, language learning. I read a bunch of reviews, and Mondly stood out. It offered 40+ languages, daily lessons, speech recognition, conversation simulations; all the features I needed, minus the ongoing costs.

I bought it that night. And honestly, it exceeded my expectations. By the time we left for Barcelona, I could order food, ask directions, and handle basic interactions without constantly looking at Pedro. The app focused on practical phrases, and the bite-sized lessons made it easy to stay consistent, even during the chaos of pre-trip planning and work. 

One of my favorite moments was in Mallorca when Pedro had gone off to grab snacks and I had to negotiate with the scooter rental guy. Instead of panicking or reaching for google translate I was able to figure it out before he returned. While my grammar wasn’t perfect, it felt great to manage the situation alone.

What started as a budget-friendly solution turned into something I actually wanted to keep up with. I’ve saved hundreds by skipping subscriptions this year, and I’m already using the same app to start learning Portuguese for a potential trip next fall. Dealify opened the door, not just to one language, but to a whole new way of learning.