Annalisa12

Smile.

One of my best interactions was with a woman who spoke no English and I spoke no Arabic. Our eyes said it all.

Reds2011

You forgot to add the part about using hand signals and exaggerated pronunciation

Makes me cringe ​​every time I see it.

FatnLoud

My personal favourite recollection of cultural/linguistic challenges is being in a small back-street shop a few years ago in Harbin, where a very large gentleman in a Dallas Cowboys jacket and cap was shouting "Hostess Twinkies" and pointing at his mouth in front of the poor bemused shopkeeper.

I wasn't sure whether he was trying to buy some or justifying a request for medical help.

backprop

I agree that learning pleasantries in the local language is absolutely required for English speakers. But IMO if the value of learning common phrases, particularly questions, is dubious unless you are really trying to master the language.

Watch a boatload of tourists with their "dos cervesas por favor" Spanish, for example. When the waiter replies "Qué tipo de cerveza te gustaría?" their faces go blank. The conversation then repeats itself in English, which it should have been in to begin with. No use in pretending that one party is anything other than monolingual.

lmashton

My husband is fluent in a few languages with passable knowledge of a few others. When we were in the UAE, we originally thought he'd end up taking his Arabic for a spin, but it turned out that his Hindi was far more useful.

We try to learn at least a bunch of basic phrases at the bare minimum before we go to a country where an unfamiliar language is spoken. The husband is better at picking up languages than I am.

pinniped

That's when the waiter just shakes his head and brings them Corona.

Loren Pechtel

Questions can have value if the answer can be communicated very simple words or no words at all. If I get asked a question in obviously limited English I'm going to try to make things as easy to understand as possible.

For example, the Russian guy asking for my help in the airport in China--he was stumped by one line on the form to fill out for immigration. His English was obviously quite poor so I limited my speaking to one word: "ticket". When he produced his boarding pass I pointed to the flight number on it and to the blank on the form. He got it right away.

Likewise, a "where is x?" question can be approximately answered with pointing.

RustyC

This is an area where being introverted can be an advantage because introverts are often much less into verbal communication ANYWAY in their own language, and are more practiced at a kind of sign language of pointing at things or talking very closed-endedly with an economy of words to try to avoid misunderstanding.

They're also better at sussing things out in other ways that don't involve asking a person, if that's the nature of the communication. Males especially are stereotyped as not wanting to do that.

Throw in a language barrier and voila, it can become adaptive. Of places I go regularly I probably get the most barrier in deep South America (many people speak no English at all). The high-school Spanish helps along with the mime routine in some instances (if there's something to point out that helps). Yet I also reserve the right to play the dumb-foreigner card for less-desired interactions where there's suddenly amnesia on the Spanish.

It also helped at least somewhat on an Indonesia trip once to Maluku and Irian Jaya which to this day is my best trip. East of Bali the English prevalence just fell off a cliff.

The point being that if you're normally not someone who relies a lot on verbal communication (and get to be misunderstood like a lot of introverts), it can actually be to your advantage in dealing with a sudden language barrier.

Carnforth

One of the best aids to communicate with foreigners is to learn a foreign language.


Before I am accused of being facetious my reason for saying that is that an awful lot of mono-lingual English-speaking folk have little idea of what it is like being on the receiving end -
When you have studied (any) foreign languages, you soon learn to speak in ways that will more easily be understood - simple (but not condescending) words, avoiding colloquialisms and avoiding phrases that may confuse.
An example of the latter is that an English speaker, enquiring after a person's health might say "How are you going"
A puzzled non-English speaker, may with some justification, respond with "I am going by bus"

sethweinstein

And, of course, "Please charge me in local currency"...

I agree that trying a language you wouldn't expect can have its advantages. Knowing Russian helped me check into a hotel in Germany and celebrate my birthday in China.

I'm astounded by Google Translate -- that you can take a picture of something and it'll translate it on the spot with a data connection. Having the offline dictionary also helps immensely.

Basic motions seem to be universally understood, and I've rarely (maybe never) failed to get the information or service I needed by being polite and using some judicious motions. I've found almost everyone to be helpful and try to understand when it's obvious there's a language barrier. I don't know any Mandarin beyond "Thank you," but I turned up at a silk factory in China and somehow got them to find a bed for me in their courtyard when the only hotel in town didn't accept foreigners.

Of course, a translation of anything crucial and specific (such as "I'm allergic to nuts") might be worth having written out on paper.

I also agree that knowing a few words in the local language can be helpful but can also be awkward (as in the beer example above). If I'm in China and have carried on a brief conversation in English with a native Mandarin speaker, I'd feel weird ending with "Xie xie" -- as if to say, "Look, I can speak some Chinese too!"

Enjoy the travels and don't worry too much.

Seth

invisible

Wikivoyage has number of phrasebooks for different languages.

An effort, just an effort to speak minimum amount of local phrases can help a lot. Nobody expects to you speak with locals fluently on their local language but if you don't behave like an arrogant tourists, than politeness and few local words might take you long way.

mdkowals

1) Google Translate works surprisingly well. The photo option is especially useful for reading menus and simple signs.


2) If you're having a conversation in broken English, keep your grammar and vocabulary simple, use the elementary school synonym for words where multiple words apply. ("Do I turn right at the next street" is better than "You see that next block ahead, should I hang a right?"). You can also try writing things down in English to communicate, sometimes people know the written version of a language better than the spoken version.


3) For prices, etc...you can pull out your phone and type in a number into the calculator. This is especially common in "rural" China.


4) If you're in a crunch for time, instead of learning phrases you can just learn the key nouns you need for your trip. Saying, or being able to read, "Train?" in the preferred language works about as well as "Where is the train station?" You can also pick up "Water", "Toilet", "Hotel".....

MSPeconomist

Never leave your hotel without having the hotel name, address, and phone number (in the local language). If you see a postcard with a picture of the hotel building, take that with you too. Your hotel can write down the name and address of your destination in the local language to show to taxi drivers.

If I'm buying train tickets from a person, I always write down the names of the stations at my origin and destination with an arrow (or double arrows for a RT), the times under the names of each city, the date, and first/second class. You can draw a picture of a seat map to indicate whether you want to reserve an window or an aisle seat, etc.

If you can find a little menu translator booklet, that can be handy, especially if it explains the dish in stead of just giving literal translations such as "forest style chicken" or "grandmother's veal."

pinniped

Wish I would have had this before I ordered andouille during my first-ever trip to France as a kid.

Hey, it's just a spicy Louisiana sausage, right?

darthbimmer

That's a poor example. The line "Dos cervezas por favor" is widely shared as the punchline of joke about how un-important it is to learn much Spanish when visiting Spanish-speaking parts of the world. Obviously people who take the joke as literally true will find the joke is on them.

I've found knowing the following words/phrases in other languages enormously helpful:

• Hello/Good morning/Good Evening
• Please
• Thank you
• Goodbye/Farewell
• Pardon/I'm sorry
• Where is the station?
• Where is the bathroom?
• Please take me to <name> hotel/train station/airport
• Please give me one/two/three/more
• I need a doctor
• Do you speak English?

It's true that knowing a handful or two of phrases in the local language is not the same as being able to hold a conversation, even a short one, in said language. But that's not the point. Far more often than not these phrases accomplish their purpose without descending in Q&A. And when further discussion is required-- and entails a switch to English-- the fact that it was started in the local language, showing appreciation of local norms and customs, makes people generally much more inclined to help.