Chucking It 801: Speaking the Language When You Don’t

Welcome back to our many-part series of questions about whether you are ready to become a meandering minimalist. If the answer is no, or not yet, we offered alternate options. Part 1 asked if you like travel. Part 2 encouraged you to think through your obligations. Then, Part 3 talked about your potential travel companions. Part 4 talked about your health and health insurance options, and Part 5 talked about having less stuff, both theoretically and practically. Part 6 encouraged you to begin thinking about how mobile your lifestyle is, especially in terms of fun, and Part 7 encouraged you to think about the routines in your life and how they might become mobile! Here, in Part 8, we cover a topic that produces a lot of anxiety: speaking the language.

The Hard Way and the Easy Way

We’ve shared some of our own language difficulties. And in this post, we’re going to get down to the nitty-gritty: what do you do when you are travelling somewhere and you don’t know the language? The answer is, it depends, a lot. On you, on where you’re going, on your goals, on your flexibility. In some places, you will more at sea than others. For us, that was Istanbul: try as we might, we could never put together a decent sentence. Still, we did manage to learn the basics (stay tuned for our post on the key words to know in any language). It wasn’t pretty, but we used our words, and pantomimed the rest.

The most important thing here – so important that we’re going to say it again later – is that you learn to speak a language by speaking the language. Practice as much as you can, even if you sound silly. We’ve recommended Duolingo as a great way to progress in a language. But it works best if you intend to really learn a language; it’s not much use for a week-long trip.

Speaking the Language in a Week-Long Trip

It’s important to be clear about your goals. Obviously, we’d all like to be the kind of people who can effortlessly converse in multiple languages. (Wouldn’t we? Or is that just us…?) Probably, though, your needs are more modest. You want to be able to do fun stuff, and to function. Let’s break that down further. In a week-long trip you might need to:

• get through customs
• make your way to where you are staying
• communicate with the people who are hosting you
• find the bathroom
• get food you like
• make your way around town
• do fun stuff: buy tickets to a museum, go to a concert, etc.
• give and receive basic greetings

Each one of these is a fairly specific situation, requiring no more than a dozen or so phrases, e.g., for the first, your own nationality, ‘tourist’ and the length of your visit. Ideally you will spend some time looking up these words in advance.

The Hard Way: Learn the Language for Real

For real language study, the kind you do every day over a sustained period, think carefully about how you learn and combine that with your goals. Most people find reading much easier than listening, and certainly than speaking. And there will be stuff to read – say, a menu, or signs in a train station. But what you most need to practice is conversations. We’re working on Italian at the moment. So we’ve incorporated podcasts, tv, music, conversation with each other and with native speakers, and even transcribing short passages of dictation (this makes sure you really get every word). If you don’t know a native speaker, and are too busy to do all of this, consider a couple of sessions with italki, a site that matches you with native speakers for video chats for fairly little money.

The hard way is how we roll, much of the time. Our usual strategy, depending on how much preparation time we have, is to do lots of low-level work (e.g., set your phone’s language to the language you’re trying to learn, or watch a favourite show dubbed into that language) and to combine that with hard things, like writing an email or imagining both sides of a conversation in which you discuss yesterday’s football match. Flashcards are a brilliant way to work on vocabulary. If, like us, you are paper-free, consider Memrise or Anki, two apps with preset and customizable flashcards that cover many of the basic vocabulary situations. Or make your own, old-school.

We handle the inevitable plateaus by switching things up, by putting ourselves in new situations to learn new vocabulary, and by watching cartoons in our target language.

The Easy Way: Just Go, and Speak

Let’s say you are not going to do any of these things. We won’t judge. But do a little homework: learn hello and goodbye and please and thank you and I’m sorry. Find out how likely it is that people where you are going speak languages you know. Once you are actually there, be patient with yourself. Look stuff up. Smile and try not to worry. When you’re using English, aim for simple: ‘I’m just kidding you!’ is harder to understand than ‘I make a joke!’ – even though the latter is not something you’d usually say. DO NOT be worried about making a fool of yourself. You already have, without noticing it. Nobody knows you here; nobody cares. Let this anxiety go: your goal is to communicate, not to write a grammar textbook. So just say stuff. Your phone will be able to help you in case of actual need (we swear by Google Translate), and people around the world are kind. Aside from a very few, everyone will be pleased that you are trying.

One small favour: if you have ever made your way around without really speaking the language, write us a note to encourage others! Or share other tips you’ve found useful.