Foreign Languages for the International Traveler
I have no
aptitude for learning foreign languages
What is the bare
minimum I should learn for my trip?
I
want to be able to break away from the package tour occasionally.
I want to
learn to conduct conversations in a new language.
Any other tips or shortcuts?
I have no
aptitude for learning foreign languages
Let's face it, there are plenty of folks who have no interest or aptitude for
learning foreign languages. If you are honest with yourself and realize that
learning a new language is beyond you, then you have several attractive
alternatives for international travel:
- Visit countries where English is the native language or widely spoken:
Great Britain, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, India. You can
have a great time and a lifetime of wonderful memories even if you limit
yourself to English speaking countries.
- Visit other countries in a fully escorted package tour. Many people see
the world on fully escorted package tours and have a great time. The fully
escorted tour will provide English-speaking guides at every stop and
English-speaking tour company employees to take care of any problems that
may arise.
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What is the
bare minimum I should learn for my trip?
If you go on a package tour, you might want to learn a few words of the
native language. This will give you the courage to strike out on your own for a
few hours, perhaps taking a walk around your hotel neighborhood.
Basic tourist words are
- Yes, no
- Please, thank you
- Help!
- Excuse me, sir/madam, do you speak English?
- I speak only a little [insert native language]
- Where is the toilet?
- Numbers from zero to ten
This can take you a long ways! You can walk into a snack bar, for example,
point at something and say, "Two, please. Thank you.".
If you know the numbers from zero to ten, you can recite your hotel address
to a cab driver, you can leave your telephone number with someone (say a
secretary or housekeeper) and you can give your hotel room number to the front desk or
breakfast room attendant.
Here's a good way to drill on the numbers in advance of your trip: Make a little cheat sheet on a
small piece of paper and take it with you in the car. Using other cars' licence
plates as flash cards read the numbers to yourself out loud. Put that
commuting or kid-schlepping time to good use!
Initiating a conversation with "I only speak a little [language name]..." is
polite, as it conveys the impression that you are the one at disadvantage
by not speaking their language, rather than the other way around.
Get a phrase book and dictionary to take with your on your trip.
We have a nice list of phrase books and beginners'
language courses in this web site. Rick
Steves publishes phrase books and dictionaries specially designed for the
budget traveler.
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I
want to be able to break away from the package tour occasionally.
Package tours are nice, but sometimes you just want to get away from the
group and wander around by yourself. Or, you may want to take a
bed-and-breakfast only tour which leaves you on your own during the day.
Get a home-study cassette or CD-ROM course at your local computer software
store, or use the hyperlinks in this web site to go directly to the page in
Amazon.com. Spend about a half an hour a day for several months and you will learn
enough to ask directions, read a menu, shop and spend your days
semi-independently. Your hotel, breakfast and transportation are still included
in the bed-and-breakfast tour, and there are still tour company employees to
help if you really get in a jam.
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I want
to learn to conduct conversations in a new language.
You need to enroll in an adult study course at your local college or adult
education school. Here are a few tips that might help you get started:
- Before starting the course, review parts of speech in English. Grab your
kid's English grammar textbook and refresh your memory on participles, verbs, imperatives,
and all those things you thought you'd never have to see again.
- Other languages have singular and plural forms of the word
"you". In English we have one word for
"you". In Spanish they have five. (Tú, usted, ustedes, vosotros
and vosotras.)
- Look out for formal and familiar second person ("you"). It is insulting to address
a person you barely know in the familiar. Similarly, it is insulting to
address someone formally when they are using the familiar second person with
you.
- Nouns have gender! Look out for inanimate objects being assigned masculine
and feminine gender. Some languages have no way to say "it".
- Note that foreign versions of "Mrs." does not necessarily mean a
married woman. It can simply mean "lady" or an adult women
independent of her parents. In such cases, the equivalent of "Mr."
similarly means an adult man independent of his parents.
Any other tips or shortcuts?
Glad you asked. Try to use "jumper words" whenever you can as a
memory device. As an example, jour means day in French. A good
jumper might be the English word journal, as a journal is something you
write in every day, or keep daily records. Think day...
journal... jour and you have your jumper word into French. Another good
example is Monday. In Spanish, Monday is el lunes. Monday was
named for the moon (moon-day). The English adjective for moon is lunar.
(Lunar surface, lunar landing, etc.) Here are your jumper words: Monday...
moon-day... lunar ... el lunes. Have a look at The
Days of the Week in various languages.
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11/03/2003
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