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Step 3Learn the Language
So, you get off the plane, you're all full of enthusiasm and ready to meet new people, and.. the only phrase you know how to say is "please, I am naked and need a new grandmother"
What do you do? How do you pick up the functional bits of a language?
Pronunciation is key. If your accent is close enough, people will absent-mindedly repeat the word you're trying to say, pronounced correctly, and then answer you in their native language. If your pronunciation is too far off, no matter how good your understanding of grammatical structures, people will try to switch to whatever language it is that you're better at. So really try and form your lips around the sounds that people are making. It might feel weird. It might tickle. That's the best part!
Star:
If you want to trade language instruction, check out MyHappyPlanet, the social network for finding foreign language partners.
STREET PREACHERS. Pray that your city has street preachers. I listened to this guy for at least an hour. Why are street preachers awesome? Their *job* is to be effective communicators. So, all they DO is speak clearly. You can learn a ton about pronunciation by listening carefully to one of these guys. Secondly, they have a tendency to break into song. Yeah, that makes pretty much anything awesome. Finally, they tend to be telling stories you already know, so the words and ideas are extra-recognizeable!
Window-shopping. Not in windows, but shopping to interact with folks instead of buying things. Walk around, see if there are vendors in the streets, or go to stores and look at things. Form basic questions about what you can. People who sell things deal with a lot of people, and so are most likely to be able to switch gears, slow down, and communicate with you.
Go to grocery stores. They're perfect! Everything is labeled, and has pictures if it's packaged! It's like walking around in a fricking language picture-book!
Ask for directions. Ask directions of many people, even if you are pretty sure you know where you're going. It's the best way to strike up a conversation on the street! Just about everyone gets a kick out of being helpful. Also, every single person will describe the route from point A to point B in totally different terms, so you learn twice as much by asking two people!
MIT AI professor Patrick Winston says half daily language use is describing trajectories. So if you master the basic "this with respect to that" words for placement and "go from here to there", half of everything you need to know how to say is covered.
Fishermen on docks, and others doing interesting things in public will be okay with talking to you for a bit.
Phrasebooks. Carry one in your pocket and look at it when you're on your own, to bolster your ability to hold a conversation. Dictionaries are relatively useless. Think about it - nobody carries a dictionary while speaking their native language; if you can't think of exactly the right word, just use other words. On the other hand, phrasebooks are specifically designed to cover what you'll need to know on the streets, and do an unbelievable job of covering most of what you'll encounter.
Children's books are also incredibly good. I lived across from a public library in Amsterdam for a bit and taught myself a whole bunch of Dutch from their children's section.
Phil B wrote a great instructable on how to learn a language, by yourself, at home, without the benefit of native speakers.
Dustin:
Learning a language is easy. You just have to pay attention to how people say things and repeat their words verbatim.
Start with the phrase "thank you for your patience, i'm a stupid american learning your beautiful language"
This is funny and opens people up to you. They will likely attempt to show you their culture, that's a good thing even if it means drinking the blood of strange animals and getting fucked up parasites.
Also learn "what does x mean?"
Most people will happily give you a language lesson if you just say "hey can I have a language lesson?" because everyone loves explaining why people are not doing something right.
There is a simple phrase you can use to meet people
"Join me for lunch/dinner/a drink?" it's incredibly effective because it's friendly, open and makes it easy to say yes.
KEEP YOUR GODDAMN VOICE DOWN
When in foreign countries Americans feel the urge to scream everything they say. It is highly annoying to everyone, please stop. Traveling by yourself will highlight this and give you the acute urge to wear a canadian flag on your pack.
Tim:
Traveling alone is great for language learning. Especially buses. A stranger sits down next to me, and before long we're talking about what's is like being a nurse, treated protesters with bullet wounds during the last police riot, and my brain is aching from trying conjugate right and not to say words in Arabic or Japanese, or whatever my 2nd best language is at the time.
In the Marshall Islands, a place where people aren't in a hurry, I'd just sit on my steps with a dictionary and a bilingual book, and my neighbors would come and help me find words and correct my pronunciation. Usually I'd get worn out before they did.
A taxi driver on the way to the airport out gave me some really good language help. To this day I regret not getting his contact info and asking to room with him next time.
Living in a house with kids is great there, because they speak the adult language not baby talk. Kids won't ever believe you can't speak it, so they'll keep talking to you 18 hours a day.
A girlfriend that doesn't speak your language is supposed to be good for language learning, but I've never done that on a trip. Travel makes me shy. In the States once I dated a woman who didn't speak English. It was fine, communicating with diagrams and dictionaries.
Until one day we had a fight. Suddenly she spoke tons of relationship jargon I barely knew and kicked my ass in highly technical relationship English. I was agog. I think she learned it from popular music.
Speaking of which, LEARN SONGS. I'll never ever forget how to say "pull the feathers from his head" in French, since it's in the song "Frere Jacques". Singing and especially moving along with it is supposed to activate the language learning parts of the brain in the most effective way.
To get pronunciation I talk along with the radio. Believe it or not, you can turn your brain off, connect your ear directly to your mouth, and speak unknown languages right behind the announcer.
Cars are usually bad. I drove across Europe with an American pal, and didn't feel like we'd gone anywhere. We saw the inside of the car, the road, talked to each other, and spent a million frankies on well-taxed gasoline. We traded the car for a motorcycle and met more people, since we had no parking problems, got onto smaller roads, and stopped a lot.
I've heard a car is good in Cuba, where hitchhiking is normal. Otherwise, it'll hurt your language learning.
Orian:
Get a small notepad and carry it in you're pocket. If you're like me, and you forget new words about 30 seconds after you learn them, it'll help you a lot to have something you can write the word down on in that same time frame. Study these words so you don't have to ask 20 more times before you remember them.
Don't be intimidated to travel places where you don't know the language. It's amazing how much communication can be done with gestures or with drawings (remember your pocket notebook). Of course its nice to try to pick up a few words while you're there, but there are just too many languages to try to learn them all before traveling. In Guatemala, for example, there are 23 spoken languages so some charades are likely even if you're fluent in Spanish.
What do you do? How do you pick up the functional bits of a language?
Pronunciation is key. If your accent is close enough, people will absent-mindedly repeat the word you're trying to say, pronounced correctly, and then answer you in their native language. If your pronunciation is too far off, no matter how good your understanding of grammatical structures, people will try to switch to whatever language it is that you're better at. So really try and form your lips around the sounds that people are making. It might feel weird. It might tickle. That's the best part!
Star:
If you want to trade language instruction, check out MyHappyPlanet, the social network for finding foreign language partners.
STREET PREACHERS. Pray that your city has street preachers. I listened to this guy for at least an hour. Why are street preachers awesome? Their *job* is to be effective communicators. So, all they DO is speak clearly. You can learn a ton about pronunciation by listening carefully to one of these guys. Secondly, they have a tendency to break into song. Yeah, that makes pretty much anything awesome. Finally, they tend to be telling stories you already know, so the words and ideas are extra-recognizeable!
Window-shopping. Not in windows, but shopping to interact with folks instead of buying things. Walk around, see if there are vendors in the streets, or go to stores and look at things. Form basic questions about what you can. People who sell things deal with a lot of people, and so are most likely to be able to switch gears, slow down, and communicate with you.
Go to grocery stores. They're perfect! Everything is labeled, and has pictures if it's packaged! It's like walking around in a fricking language picture-book!
Ask for directions. Ask directions of many people, even if you are pretty sure you know where you're going. It's the best way to strike up a conversation on the street! Just about everyone gets a kick out of being helpful. Also, every single person will describe the route from point A to point B in totally different terms, so you learn twice as much by asking two people!
MIT AI professor Patrick Winston says half daily language use is describing trajectories. So if you master the basic "this with respect to that" words for placement and "go from here to there", half of everything you need to know how to say is covered.
Fishermen on docks, and others doing interesting things in public will be okay with talking to you for a bit.
Phrasebooks. Carry one in your pocket and look at it when you're on your own, to bolster your ability to hold a conversation. Dictionaries are relatively useless. Think about it - nobody carries a dictionary while speaking their native language; if you can't think of exactly the right word, just use other words. On the other hand, phrasebooks are specifically designed to cover what you'll need to know on the streets, and do an unbelievable job of covering most of what you'll encounter.
Children's books are also incredibly good. I lived across from a public library in Amsterdam for a bit and taught myself a whole bunch of Dutch from their children's section.
Phil B wrote a great instructable on how to learn a language, by yourself, at home, without the benefit of native speakers.
Dustin:
Learning a language is easy. You just have to pay attention to how people say things and repeat their words verbatim.
Start with the phrase "thank you for your patience, i'm a stupid american learning your beautiful language"
This is funny and opens people up to you. They will likely attempt to show you their culture, that's a good thing even if it means drinking the blood of strange animals and getting fucked up parasites.
Also learn "what does x mean?"
Most people will happily give you a language lesson if you just say "hey can I have a language lesson?" because everyone loves explaining why people are not doing something right.
There is a simple phrase you can use to meet people
"Join me for lunch/dinner/a drink?" it's incredibly effective because it's friendly, open and makes it easy to say yes.
KEEP YOUR GODDAMN VOICE DOWN
When in foreign countries Americans feel the urge to scream everything they say. It is highly annoying to everyone, please stop. Traveling by yourself will highlight this and give you the acute urge to wear a canadian flag on your pack.
Tim:
Traveling alone is great for language learning. Especially buses. A stranger sits down next to me, and before long we're talking about what's is like being a nurse, treated protesters with bullet wounds during the last police riot, and my brain is aching from trying conjugate right and not to say words in Arabic or Japanese, or whatever my 2nd best language is at the time.
In the Marshall Islands, a place where people aren't in a hurry, I'd just sit on my steps with a dictionary and a bilingual book, and my neighbors would come and help me find words and correct my pronunciation. Usually I'd get worn out before they did.
A taxi driver on the way to the airport out gave me some really good language help. To this day I regret not getting his contact info and asking to room with him next time.
Living in a house with kids is great there, because they speak the adult language not baby talk. Kids won't ever believe you can't speak it, so they'll keep talking to you 18 hours a day.
A girlfriend that doesn't speak your language is supposed to be good for language learning, but I've never done that on a trip. Travel makes me shy. In the States once I dated a woman who didn't speak English. It was fine, communicating with diagrams and dictionaries.
Until one day we had a fight. Suddenly she spoke tons of relationship jargon I barely knew and kicked my ass in highly technical relationship English. I was agog. I think she learned it from popular music.
Speaking of which, LEARN SONGS. I'll never ever forget how to say "pull the feathers from his head" in French, since it's in the song "Frere Jacques". Singing and especially moving along with it is supposed to activate the language learning parts of the brain in the most effective way.
To get pronunciation I talk along with the radio. Believe it or not, you can turn your brain off, connect your ear directly to your mouth, and speak unknown languages right behind the announcer.
Cars are usually bad. I drove across Europe with an American pal, and didn't feel like we'd gone anywhere. We saw the inside of the car, the road, talked to each other, and spent a million frankies on well-taxed gasoline. We traded the car for a motorcycle and met more people, since we had no parking problems, got onto smaller roads, and stopped a lot.
I've heard a car is good in Cuba, where hitchhiking is normal. Otherwise, it'll hurt your language learning.
Orian:
Get a small notepad and carry it in you're pocket. If you're like me, and you forget new words about 30 seconds after you learn them, it'll help you a lot to have something you can write the word down on in that same time frame. Study these words so you don't have to ask 20 more times before you remember them.
Don't be intimidated to travel places where you don't know the language. It's amazing how much communication can be done with gestures or with drawings (remember your pocket notebook). Of course its nice to try to pick up a few words while you're there, but there are just too many languages to try to learn them all before traveling. In Guatemala, for example, there are 23 spoken languages so some charades are likely even if you're fluent in Spanish.
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May 4, 2009. 5:41 PMnireves
says:
Ok, let's clear something up... most Americans DON'T speak loudly or are so obnoxious as these authors are trying to say. At least, no more or less than others. There are obnoxious people everywhere. The worst I've seen were some young Germans in Krabie, Thailand and some young Italians in Koh Samui, Thailand. They were acting truly imperialistic and rude. Also, try visiting China...there you will meet one of the loudest cultures on the planet! It's no surprise they invented firecrackers! LOL They shout into their cell phones and to each other most of the time (well, the guys do). Whew! So, my advice to potential world travelers... leave the prejudices behind. Especially the ones about your own, or familiar, cultures. Life is too short to walk around as a know-it-all.... you miss too much that way. Gute Reise! _
Reply
Mar 10, 2009. 3:24 PMOryctolagus habilis
says:
What a wonderful guide! I'm terrible at learning languages. I went to school in French for years and can barely speak it now! Anyway, we have lots of obnoxious Canadians here too. People ask me if I'm American here all the time: I have a bit of a family accent; and am a bit hard of hearing, so sometimes I talk more loudly than I realize (sometimes more softly, which is apparently just annoying.) I'm addicted to MEC gear, though. I have some REI stuff, too, so there I go being American again.
Reply
2
Jun 26, 2008. 1:09 PMroboguy
says:
Oh dear God, please, PLEASE, on behalf of all Canadians, if you are not one, DO NOT WEAR A CANADIAN FLAG ON YOUR BACKPACK. Sure, we're flattered and all, but if we meet you we'll figure it out (and no, saying that you're from Toronto or Montreal won't fool us, 'cause we'll just ask you if you've ever been to some shop on Queen west or see if you can say anything in french...). Ashamed of your own flag? Don't wear one, or do something about the people running your country so that you don't have to be ashamed. Besides, the flag thing is only part of it. If you don't have something with the MEC logo, then we'll know (and an increasing number of Europeans will, too).
Reply
Jun 27, 2008. 12:55 PMjemcclain
says:
And besides, Canadians have their share of things to do to clean up their act. Not to start a nationalist debate, but Canada is also one of the more wasteful nations that has let big business run the show. But fortunately most people in foreign countries don't know that. We all got some work to do, but stitch that flag on your backback if you're insecure.
Reply
2
Jun 27, 2008. 10:41 PMroboguy
says:
My comment was not meant to be read as "we're superior", so please don't take it that way. All I'm saying is: wear your own flag or no flag.
Reply
Jun 27, 2008. 11:55 AMskok
says:
I see a cottage industry here. You could sell "Authentic Canadian Tourist Kits"! "Afraid/ashamed to travel abroad because you're a Yank? Go Canadian!"
Reply
Jun 26, 2008. 3:57 PMTitaniumDreads
says:
as it turns out, doing something about the people who run the US is a bit more difficult than it may appear initially ;) thanks for the tip about the mec logo, just ordered one..... hahhah, just a joke but I've never actually worn a flag on my pack, Canadian or otherwise. I represent only myself and not a country.
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