Elsewhere, I’ve said that the amount of language you need is reflective of your purpose for the communication — i.e., what you’re trying to accomplish by talking with this person. Of course, needs and amount of training vary wildly, but today, I thought I’d take some time and look at what can be accomplished without any sort of FL study.

Let’s face it: the average tourist doesn’t know a single word of the language(s) where he/she chooses to travel. We tend to “just go.” Likewise, even experienced language learners and travellers (such as, ahem, yours truly) will inevitably eventually find themselves in a place that they haven’t prepared for. Even if you never venture out, you can easily find yourself in a cross-linguistic encounter even in your own hometown. You will at some point find yourself face to face with someone with whom you don’t share a common language (I find I share no common language with most of the residents of Boston, for example — har). What do you do?

A lot of us would simply shrug our shoulders, walk off, and hope to have better luck later, but if you think about it, it’s amazing what can actually be accomplished without the use of verbal language.

Encounters that I’ve had:

Directions: If you have a map and the name (written or verbal) of your destination, you can get directions, even without knowing the word for “where.” Simply saying (or pointing to) the name of the destination, shrugging and pointing about is usually all it takes. Don’t underestimate the power of gestures and pointing. I’ve had a lot of fantastically detailed “conversations” consisting completely of gestures.

Restaurants: If you can’t read the menu, look at what people are eating as you come in, and point. That simple…. East Asian (and sometimes SE Asian) often display nifty plastic models of their menu dishes just for this purpose.

Taxis: The easiest thing to do is get instructions written down by your hotel, but when in a pinch, there are other ways of making cab-drivers understand… Story digression time….
Once, during a trip with my wife (then-girlfriend) to Vietnam, I had a run-in with a cabby who spoke next to no English. French and Chinese (also good choices in Vietnam) also proved useless. Unfortunately, the only word I knew was “thank-you,” and that alone wouldn’t get us to the bus station. So what to do? How do you communicate “bus station?” Easy, my friends! I took out a pen and some paper, and drew a bus and a building.** In general, you can accomplish a lot with simple pictures. I’m easily the worst artist in the world, so don’t give me any “I can’t draw” excuses. Stick-figures work great! Don’t go out on trips without a pad and a pen!

Set routines: It’s amazing how little language we actually need in order to fulfill our daily routines. Certain transactions require no language. While Walmart clerks are prone to yakking with customers, you don’t have to talk back (or even understand what they said). It’s a set routine. Everyone knows their own role. I had a beautiful example of this back when I lived in Spain. One of my old high school chums came to visit and we dropped some film off for development. He had determined that he would go back later to pick up the pics, but due to a work conflict, I’d be unable to accompany him. He asked me to “teach him how to say, ‘I’d like to pick up my film’” to the girl at the counter. As he had a claim ticket, I figured that language was completely unnecessary. I told him just to hand her the ticket. I told him you could say “ooga” for all it mattered– he’d still get the pics. He did just that, and later reported that “ooga” works just fine…

**Unfortunately, while this illustration works well to demonstrate the point about drawing, this story had a rather frustrating (though ultimately happy) conclusion. The cabby claimed that the bus station was closed, and tried to convince us that the only way back to HCMC (and our hotel) was to pay him $50USD to drive back (about 2 hours). –See how much detail you can get even without language! We got in a terrific argument on the side of the road, which eventually became much more intelligible when my wife flagged down the first motorist she saw for some help, and he turned out to be a high school English teacher (good luck on our part!). The argument continued a while (now translated), with the guy continuing to insist that there were no buses, until a bus passed straight by, which my wife managed to flag down. We hopped on, the English teacher wished us well, and the cab driver fumed by the roadside.

This one is for the Americans…

About everywhere I go, Americans get harassed for their lack of knowledge about geography. Our reputation precedes us — all those studies showing that the majority of American high school students can’t find Iraq on a map, for instance, have convinced the world that, as a people, Americans are hopelessly clueless about the world outside our borders.

Personally, I take umbrage to such assertions…

Don’t get me wrong — there are certainly those folks who deserve the reputation. I have met some people who can’t find their own home town on a map. However, I have found these people, not just in the USA, but all over the world. It’s a basic tenet of human nature — the world stops outside your own front door. Most people are basically uninterested in what happens beyond the borders maintained by their own lives and experience. Travel, of course, widens those boundaries considerably, but let’s face it — how many people (globally) really travel extensively?

When the traveller is mocked for a supposed deficiency in geographical awareness, inevitably, what is truly being mocked is the traveller’s lack of knowledge about the place where he finds himself at the moment. –But if you think about it, at least he’s taking the time to find out for himself. These are learning moments, and you can be certain that thereafter, the traveller will fondly recall the geographic peculiarities of the area.

When someone is harassing me for not having knowledge which, to a local, may seem obvious, I find it handy to ask them about their knowledge of where you’re from. Their answers might be enlightening… For example:

A group of students (adult professionals, even — business people) argued with me for about 10 minutes claiming that New York, and not D.C., had to be the capitol of the USA.

It seems (through very informal polling, admittedly) that the majority of Taiwanese think that America has 52 states. This figure is arrived at by recalling hearing the number 50 somewhere, and then “cleverly” remembering to add Hawaii and Alaska.

No matter where in the world you are, if you are not from NYC, LA, or possibly San Francisco (mostly for East Asians), no one will have ever heard of your hometown. It’s likely they’ve never heard of your state (which incidentally has a good chance of being larger than their entire country) unless you’re from CA or NY.

Expect absolutely no concept of relative distances. As far as most people outside the US (although, I’m willing to give Canadians a pass on this) are concerned, NYC is next to LA, with nothing in between. Back when my wife and I were living in Utah, my in-laws kept asking us to “run down” to LA to pick up such-and-such. We kept telling them that it was too far, but they kept insisting. Finally, when we asked them, they admitted that they had figured we couldn’t be more than a couple of hours away from LA…. I wish….

Hello all! I’m back from a, on the whole, rather nice trip to the (American) East Coast to visit friends and family. Having grown up on the opposite end of the country from my extended family, it’s always nice to have the opportunity to go visit. I got to see my 96-year-old grandmother, introduced my wife to a bunch of relatives whom she hadn’t yet met, and just happened to “run across” a cousin whom I hadn’t seen in at least 16 years (and met his wife and two children). It was a productive trip!

One thing I’ve got to get off my chest before continuing to today’s subject: I’m calling for all readers to boycott US Airways. They single-handedly managed to turn every leg of the flight into a Kafkaesque nightmare. The short version: I’m convinced that a group of lightly trained monkeys could better arrange connecting flights than this airline (and would probably give less caustic customer support, as well). The highlight was when they arrived late, giving me 20 minutes to make a connection which required leaving security, taking a public bus to another terminal, and going back through security in order to make the connecting flight. When that failed (of course, they made it humanly impossible!), they decided to charter a taxi to take us 5 hours by ground to our destination in lieu of merely putting us up for the night (which would have been more expensive). They swore up and down that our bags had preceded us on the missed flight, but when we arrived (at 3am) at our final destination we were told that, in actuality, our bags had been sitting in the very office of the person who told us they were on route to our destination, and thus, I had to wait until the next day to pick up the bags. Needless to say, US Airways is never again getting a penny from me, and I’d highly encourage everyone to avoid them at all costs.

Today, I would like to suggest a little experiment for my readers. I often hear from people who get very discouraged with their FL listening comprehension skills. They end up having to ask people to repeat themselves often, and have difficulty following conversations with involving 3 or more participants. While this can certainly be indicative of a lack of FL fluency, I have found that many or most intermediate-advanced learners tend to be their own worst critics. The truth is that most of us mishear or fail to catch dozens of comments and questions directed toward us each day — even in our own native languages. This is particularly common in “conversational openers.” I, for one, often have to ask for repetition when shopkeepers or restaurant owners ask me unanticipated questions (i.e., “would you care for a McFishburger with your Big Mac combo?”).
So here is the experiment: take a full day (hey! try it tomorrow!) and keep track of how many times you mishear or need to ask for repetition in your own native language throughout the course of the day. I think you’ll be surprised at how common it is. Hopefully, this will help people to start to relax when they don’t understand everything in their FL. Be mindful of how much impact background noise and cross conversations have on your ability to follow what people are saying. If you do this, drop me a line or leave a comment, and let us know what you found…

This will be the last post for a week. I’ll be taking off tomorrow with the wife to VA and NC, so I’m not planning any new posts during next week. Please do check back from Monday, the 28th.

I was super-impressed to actually hear back from Mr. Dondero, who was the subject of the last post. Please check out his comments. It sounds like he is an example of an exceptionally motivated language learner. I would encourage anyone who thinks, “I could never do anything like that” to take heart. As Eric shows, it’s more about determination and interest than anything else.

Now Mr. Dondero did manage to touch upon the area I had planned to focus on today, and thus has formed the perfect bridge to the topic: Language Maintenance.

I think anybody with substantial language learning experience — especially those with experience learning multiple languages has experienced language deterioration. This usually takes the form of being “rusty” — e.g., not remembering vocabulary words (that you know you should know) or exhibiting trouble phrasing your thoughts. With multiple language interference, you may find yourself projecting L3 structures on the L2, or confuse vocabulary words between languages. This is all perfectly normal. In fact, except in cases of people who grew up speaking both languages (i.e., “balanced bilinguals”), there is normally some trouble maintaining languages that are not being used. To put the reason simply, the human brain was built for efficiency (yeah, I’m serious…). If it doesn’t have to keep two separate language systems active, it won’t. There are cases of adopted children as old as 11 who completely lose their native languages. By and large, if you aren’t using a language much, it will start to slip. If you start to learn an additional foreign language (an L3), strangely enough, at first you’ll feel frustrated by the urge to slip in L2 (your first foreign language’s) vocabulary and structure, in order to give yourself a broader range of expression. Then, once you get to a basic level of communicative competence in the L3, if you are spending a disproportionate amount of time learning the new(er) language, the L3 will start to interfere with L2 production. Basically, whatever language is “forward-most in your brain” (my own coinage, admittedly), will predominate, even if you speak it at a lower level than your other language(s). It’s frustrating… I can relate, for instance, that whatever country I find myself in, I usually start to have trouble with languages other than that of the country where I am. The exception is the USA, where, as a “neutral setting” (for me, as a native speaker of English), I have more immediate recall of all other languages I speak.

So what to do to keep from losing all your hard-earned language proficiency?

Fortunately, rebuilding language skills is nowhere near as hard as the original learning of the language, nonetheless, it’s preferable to try to stem the loss in the first place… Thus, I offer the following recommendations:

1) Read in the FL: This is great because it can be done anywhere. Go onto the Amazon site of a country that speaks your FL and buy cheap paperback novels, or whatever strikes your fancy. If you speak multiple languages, you can rotate months or books between the languages. Even reading the same book in different languages will certainly help to preserve vocabulary and structure recall. Reading is one of the best vocabulary builders for any language.

2) Go online and surf sites in the language: You can probably find a bit of everything: text, video, audio — it’s all there. Try to find radio sites in your language for listening practice.

3) Try to find a language community, and join in: While small town dwellers will probably have limited options, if you are in a medium to large city, you will often be able to find ethnic/language based groups. Most are quite open to “outsiders” who exhibit genuine interest in their language and culture. If you can make friends in the FL, that will go a long way towards giving you an avenue for sufficient maintenance practice.

Have a good week, and I’ll be back on the 28th!!!

This seems to be a frequent refrain in this blog… Yesterday, I came across an article (couldn’t find the original article, but here’s one here) detailing Ron Paul’s former aide’s (Eric Dondero) announcement that he would challenge Ron Paul (a current “who???”-type candidate for the Republican presidential ticket, whose only claim to fame so far is getting his rear end handed to him by Rudy in the latest debate) for the Texas District 14 seat. Blah, blah, blah… This isn’t a political forum… What caught my eye was the following:

Some other resume highlights:
Fluent in Spanish (our District is fully 40% Hispanic)
I speak 10 to 15 other languages
US Navy Veteran, (hon.)
20-year Federal Appointee, Selective Service Board, Houston Region
VFW & American Legion Member
(blah, blah, blah…)

Ok, here’s my question.. What the heck does this guy mean by 10-15 other languages? Does he not know? I looked him up and the guy seems to be a language enthusiast** and instructor (and one can only hope, a reader of this blog *grin*). Still, he falls into the trap — common in the American (and certain other countries) population — of claiming to “speak” multiple languages. What does that really mean? I know a few stock phrases which allow me to carry a limited conversation in Farsi. Does that mean I “speak” Farsi? I actually studied some German back in high school, and even got to use it when I lived on the (French side of the) border of Germany. Do I speak German? I would answer both these questions with a no. Normally, when we claim to “speak” a language, this assumes some level of fluency. “Speaking” a language is very different from “speaking in” a language. Every time I say “capiche” (”do you understand?” — Italian) to my wife, I’m speaking in Italian, but I certainly don’t “speak” Italian. A lot of people will claim to “speak” any language that they’ve ever been exposed to or studied, but think before you do this… How long could you actually keep a conversation going? What types of conversations could you have? How comfortable are you in the language? How well do you understand native speech?
Rule of thumb — if you can’t even decide whether or not you speak a language, the answer is probably no… I don’t want to rag too hard or diminish this guy’s accomplishments — he’s obviously spent a lot of time studying various languages — but you have to be careful with how you describe your language abilities lest people assign too much ability to you (which can get you in a heap of trouble!).

His throwing around terms like “fluency” and “medium fluency” are troubling as well. As fluency usually refers to native-like control of syntax, grammar, (and possibly, though not necessarily phonology) — as well as acting in a culturally appropriate manner — medium fluency is almost oxy-moronic. There is a significant population that uses the term fluency for “conversationally competent.” This is actually a low bar. Keep in mind that the FSI scale for measuring language ability rates the average person with a degree in the language at low to mid-intermediate. Just as a practical measure, it’s almost impossible to learn a language much beyond a novice level of competency in a year, unless immersed. Even then, you won’t get beyond an intermediate level. Mitigating factors, of course, include knowledge of a related language, and general language-learning aptitude.

Now, I could be completely wrong. This guy could be an absolute prodigy, but I feel fairly confident in assuming that this guy has competent (but likely non-professional competence) Spanish (i.e., he can have a general conversation about daily affairs without any undue difficulty), and speaks a smattering of a handful of others. The 10-15 probably refers to what he remembers on any given day. So how can one state this without overstating one’s abilities? I usually recommend the following (still very imperfect) categories:

Native
Studied Fluency (just what it sounds like — it should be a professional level of competency - at least a 3 on the FSI - meaning the ability to conduct your profession in the language — i.e., the ability to live and work in the country)
Conversational ability
Limited Conversational ability: (this is a very broad — and thus quite useful — category)
Tourist-level ability
(anything below this — i.e., a few memorized phrases — is not really worthy of noting except as trivia)

**His language learning tips are somewhat simplistic (i.e., non-theory based) but practical. I do take issue with his definition of “fluency” with Spanish. I seriously doubt that anyone has ever crossed from “advanced” to “fluent” (which is usually defined as a native-speaker level of control) in a 3 month immersion setting. He also states, “[f]or my next language - Italian - I cut the language learning time in half. For French and Portuguese I cut the time it took me to learn Italian by half.” — While, generally, the more languages you learn, the easier it becomes (due mostly to increased metalinguistic awareness and knowledge of one’s own learning preferences), he completely ignores the fact that, as all these languages are closely related, and share similar vocabulary and grammar, any learner of these languages will find them increasingly easy. I only claim to “speak” Spanish and French, and I can still understand and communicate with Italian and Portuguese speakers despite no formal training whatsoever in those languages.

Following on the heels of the last post — we looked at what phrases to learn if we are trying to learn a few phrases for a specific travel purpose (limited in scope). Today, I want to expand upon that, and try to answer an oft-reoccurring question: how much foreign language proficiency does one need?

To put it simply, there are as many answers to that question as there are people. Each and every person on this planet has unique wants and needs, and their language ability has to be able to communicate them to others. Each FL learner is going to vary slightly in the vocabulary they acquire according to their own needs and experiences. Simply put, we learn the amount of language required to live the lives that we want to live. We rarely learn much else, except passively through experience. This holds true even in our native languages. For example, I am certainly not up to date with the current teen slang. They are not my peers — it doesn’t interest me. If I took up teaching at the local high school, however, I would probably passively acquire quite a bit, just from being in close proximity to teens all day. It’s unlikely that I would use such expressions myself, but I would understand what I hear. Likewise in the various languages I speak, my vocabulary in each language varies somewhat according to the needs and experiences I had while learning them. For example, in Japan, I drove a car (as opposed to taking public transport in Europe, and driving a motor scooter in Taiwan). I, thus, learned a lot of car-part vocabulary in Japanese (from driving with friends, talking about driving, going to the mechanic, etc.), which I don’t necessarily know in other languages. Offhand, I can name most of the inside parts of a car in Japanese and French; I’m about 50/50 in Spanish (which, in many ways, is my most “fluent” language), and very few in Chinese. There are some concepts/items that, due to unique experiences, I know better in certain languages than I do in English. For example, due to not growing up with sisters, and marrying a (lovely!) Chinese-speaking woman, a lot of my knowledge of “the world of women,” including (strange) costume items, clothes, makeups, etc. (i.e., all of the strange things that invaded my bathroom after getting hitched) is in Chinese, and I would be at an absolute loss trying to communicate in English half the items sitting on my bathroom sink right now.

If the amount and type of language we need is dependent on needs and experience, you need to identify needs as best as you can before you go. How long will you be there? Where are you going? What do you want to accomplish there? What do you like to do in your time off? What type of people will you meet (e.g., vendors, sales people, medical patients, etc.)? — Being able to articulate your travel goals will vastly improve the accuracy of your planning in pre-travel language study. Still, you’ll always — no matter what you’re doing in the foreign country — find yourself needing to learn some things “on the fly.” This is quite normal, and in fact, this type of vocabulary learning is often the easiest to remember. Connecting vocabulary acquisition with specific experience will make you remember forever. I’ve had friends who can remember specific vocabulary words learned in unique situations for decades after everything else fades. For example, one friend who went to Indonesia years ago and had a break down in her rented car can still remember all the words she learned from villagers which were then related to the mechanic when he arrived…

While it’s impossible to generalize much more, I’d like to offer a couple of firm recommendations:

1) The amount of language you learn should be proportionate to the amount of time you spend there. Typically, anything more than 1wk-1month (depending what you’re doing), and not learning anything will be perceived by natives as increasingly insulting. While they may not demand (or even expect) anything close to fluency, a steadfast refusal to learn anything is most usually seen as a rejection of the culture. Sadly, I’ve met people who have been in countries for decades, and still cannot formulate and intelligible sentence. One guy I met in Japan, had been there for 20+ years, had a Japanese wife, and still could probably count all the words he knew on his fingers and toes. A missionary couple I met in Taiwan had been there nearly 8 years and could barely count to 100 in Chinese. I, meanwhile, had been in the country for only 2 months at the time, and could hold rudimentary conversations.

2) Look carefully at where you’re going… It’s very typical to find that English (or other lingua francas) may work well in the capitol city — which often leads to a false sense of ease for travellers. Once outside of the big cities, however, the availability of English proficient service providers can plummet or disappear entirely. I’ve met many a soul who claimed that Taiwan was a highly English-proficient country. While I try not to disparage my once home, and the birthplace of my spouse, every Taiwanese person knows just how hilarious that statement is. While certainly possessing more fluent speakers (per capita) than many of its near neighbors, most people familiar with the country are aware that English is not widely spoken outside of the capitol. Inevitably, anyone calling Taiwan an English-speaking society reveals themselves as someone who has only been to limited sections of Taipei. Outside of Taipei, the English level drops progressively the further south you go.

Heck — even walking a block or two in the wrong direction can completely eliminate the English language service that many tourists mistakenly believe is indicative of entire countries. I remember well in my younger years walking down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris. With some the ritziest shopping in the world, you’d better believe that you won’t find a single shopkeeper on the whole street who isn’t absolutely fluent in English — and there’s a high availability of other languages too. Unlike most, however, I (admittedly due to an uncannily awful sense of direction) turned off the main Avenue, wandered less than a block, and that English proficiency simply disappeared. Just on a lark, I decided to see how far I could go before finding someone who could speak even basic English, but gave up after over a dozen tries.

I’m getting ready for a week-long trip back to the East coast to visit friends and family, so there will be no new postings during the week of 5/21-25… I’m also getting ready to start something that I’m pretty excited about — details will be announced first thing once I get back, so check here on the 28th for details…

Following on the heels of the last post — we looked at what phrases to learn if we are trying to learn a few phrases for a specific travel purpose (limited in scope). Today, I want to expand upon that, and try to answer an oft-reoccurring question: how much foreign language proficiency does one need?

To put it simply, there are as many answers to that question as there are people. Each and every person on this planet has unique wants and needs, and their language ability has to be able to communicate them to others. Each FL learner is going to vary slightly in the vocabulary they acquire according to their own needs and experiences. Simply put, we learn the amount of language required to live the lives that we want to live. We rarely learn much else, except passively through experience. This holds true even in our native languages. For example, I am certainly not up to date with the current teen slang. They are not my peers — it doesn’t interest me. If I took up teaching at the local high school, however, I would probably passively acquire quite a bit, just from being in close proximity to teens all day. It’s unlikely that I would use such expressions myself, but I would understand what I hear. Likewise in the various languages I speak, my vocabulary in each language varies somewhat according to the needs and experiences I had while learning them. For example, in Japan, I drove a car (as opposed to taking public transport in Europe, and driving a motor scooter in Taiwan). I, thus, learned a lot of car-part vocabulary in Japanese (from driving with friends, talking about driving, going to the mechanic, etc.), which I don’t necessarily know in other languages. Offhand, I can name most of the inside parts of a car in Japanese and French; I’m about 50/50 in Spanish (which, in many ways, is my most “fluent” language), and very few in Chinese. There are some concepts/items that, due to unique experiences, I know better in certain languages than I do in English. For example, due to not growing up with sisters, and marrying a (lovely!) Chinese-speaking woman, a lot of my knowledge of “the world of women,” including (strange) costume items, clothes, makeups, etc. (i.e., all of the strange things that invaded my bathroom after getting hitched) is in Chinese, and I would be at an absolute loss trying to communicate in English half the items sitting on my bathroom sink right now.

If the amount and type of language we need is dependent on needs and experience, you need to identify needs as best as you can before you go. How long will you be there? Where are you going? What do you want to accomplish there? What do you like to do in your time off? What type of people will you meet (e.g., vendors, sales people, medical patients, etc.)? — Being able to articulate your travel goals will vastly improve the accuracy of your planning in pre-travel language study. Still, you’ll always — no matter what you’re doing in the foreign country — find yourself needing to learn some things “on the fly.” This is quite normal, and in fact, this type of vocabulary learning is often the easiest to remember. Connecting vocabulary acquisition with specific experience will make you remember forever. I’ve had friends who can remember specific vocabulary words learned in unique situations for decades after everything else fades. For example, one friend who went to Indonesia years ago and had a break down in her rented car can still remember all the words she learned from villagers which were then related to the mechanic when he arrived…

I spent the last couple of weeks talking about my FL learning experiences, but it occurred to me that I had only gone into my most successful language-learning exploits. Today, I’d like to talk a bit about a common situation: learning language when you only have a limited amount of time, need, or interest… How do you maximize efficiency in learning, and how do you go about choosing what to learn?

In general, this type of language learning is always conducted for a specific purpose, and the most pressing vocabulary items you’ll want to learn will be dependent upon that purpose. However, as the most common purpose will be tourism, today we’ll focus on that.

My general recommendation is that the first phrase of the language of any place you are planning to go touring in should be, “Do you speak ___________?” Fill in the blank with whatever language you wish. People who already speak more than one language should probably learn the name of each language they speak. You never know what you’ll find. I’ve heard of people finding unexpected linguistic comrades the world over — Hungarian speakers in Taiwan, Swahili speakers in Japan, etc. Even if you don’t learn anything else, you will be accorded much more respect, help, and general pleasantness if you can at least ask in the locals’ own language if they can help you in yours. English speakers — just imagine walking down the street in your hometown and having someone come up to you and just start jabbering in a foreign language. Even if it was one that you knew a little of, you would be much less disoriented, and much more willing and able to help if they initially asked you if you could speak the language…
Just to relate some personal experience with this: I “speak tourist” in several languages. In areas like Thailand, where English proficiency tends to be on the low side, a little Thai will go a long, long way in smoothing relations (and even getting better prices) with locals. Even in areas of very high English proficiency, like the Netherlands, I found that speaking a little Dutch was met with overwhelming gratitude. While most people quickly switched to English, some related to me directly their thanks for my at least trying their language. Indeed, in the Netherlands, many people I met there complained that they knew foreigners, of various origins, who had lived their for years and years yet still never attempted to speak a word of Dutch.

Other things to study before going (in ranked order)…

2) Learn the words for “thank you” and “please.” These are the most important phrases in any language. They will open more doors for you than any other phrase you could possibly know.

3) learn to ask directions… Even if you don’t know how to take directions, you can still get to a lot of places through pointing. Being able to ask, though, is invaluable.

4) Be sure to know the word for “toilet” — especially in conjunction with the directions part. You’ll thank me for this…

5) Learn 2-4 local food dishes that you know or think you would like. If you’re going somewhere where you can’t read the menu (example: when I was travelling in Morocco — I don’t speak/read Arabic), you can see if they have one of these things.

6) Learn the phrases: a) “I would like _________.” and b) “Do you have ________.” You can fill in the blanks with whatever you like/need, as you learn the vocabulary.

7) “How much is it/that?” You are planning on some shopping, aren’t you?

Learning numbers would be valuable, but will often take a significant time investment (i.e., this will take more than the 20 minutes advertised in the post title). In lieu of learning the numbers, one other method of haggling is to carry a calculator with you, and show the numbers to shopkeepers/clerks. In highly touristed areas, a lot of clerks will have a a calculator with them for precisely this purpose.

9) “yes,” “no,” “ok.”

10) “I want to go (to) ___________.” — Useful with taxis, buying train tickets, etc.

That’s really about it. Other than numbers, these phrases can be acquired quickly, and will make an enormous difference in the quality of any vacation/business trip. A few words of warning, however:

1) Write the phrases down – in English and in the target language. This does two things. Number one: you will get excited and forget…. ‘Nuff said… Number two: sometimes our pronunciation is so tortured that the natives will not be able to understand. In this case, simply pull out your notecard and show they the question/comment written in their own language. When taking taxis to specific destinations, often bilingual hotel clerks will be helpful enough to write out your destination on a business card which can be shown to the cab driver. The hotel card can then be used to come back when you’re finished with whatever business you’re up to.

2) A lot of people (especially juvenile males) have this strange fascination with learning “dirty” words in the foreign language. Don’t do this!!! You will try to use them, and you will look like an idiot doing so. Swear words are (surprisingly enough) so idiomatic that their correct use usually requires a startlingly high level of proficiency. What you think is a slamming retort may very well, through misused context, be interpreted quite differently– to your detriment. Regardless, if you are going as a tourist, you want to present a good image for yourself and your country.

Happy Travels!

Space… The final frontier…

Actually, Taiwan would work pretty well in that line… It’s been described by various commentators as an entrepreneurial wild wild west, of sorts. It has (officially) some of the highest rates of entrepreneurship in the world, and the highest rate of female business starters/owners in the world. It is highly unregulated (except by the laws of consumer demand), and is a place bursting with energy. It’s a study in contrasts. The (highly populated) western coast is almost unbroken urban sprawl — and hideously ugly for the most part. The eastern coast, on the other hand, is almost unspoiled, and immediately makes obvious why this island nation used to go by the name la Ilha Formosa (the beautiful island). It is a country slowly but surely asserting its own identity — while mindful of the threats of China if it too brashly declares out-and-out independence (despite defacto status as an independent nation). This little island had been an attraction to me since I was 8 years old. In July of 2001, I finally got to go…

I went to do two things: 1) work and save $$$ for grad school (after a few years of working, I was finally feeling the urge to go back to school and get an MA); and 2) learn Chinese. I ended up accomplishing a third feat: getting married… Yes, I met my wife in Taiwan. This undoubtedly was the defining part of my Taiwan experience, and probably explains 99.99% of the warm and fuzzy feelings I have towards the country. However, as this is not “the romance blog,” I’ll spare you the details… Suffice to say that, for me, Taiwan is my second home.

I managed to secure a job which promised to accomplish both my original goals. I worked for a high school which highly encouraged me to pursue Chinese study, to which end they gave me a two hour block in the middle of the day to attend university Chinese language classes. Learning Chinese was a dream come true to me, and I progressed quickly. I have always claimed to not have any particular talent for foreign language learning — merely unusually high motivation and interest. In the case of Chinese, I’m certain that motivation was key, as it developed faster than any language I had studied before (or have since). While a lot of the motivation was intrinsic desire to know and the real-time needs of communicating with shop-keepers and co-workers, this alone cannot explain my rapid rate of acquisition as my classmates, for the most part, were progressing much more slowly, despite having the same kind of living conditions. No, for me, the unusual pace of acquisition was easily traceable to a single factor — my then-girlfriend (and now wife). Unlike most of my classmates, I was spending the bulk of my time outside of class/work forced to communicate in Chinese. I was exposed to a lot more of Chinese input, too. This worked both ways, of course. My wife’s English vocabulary was virtually exploding overnight. Unlike many couples where one person with superior language skills dominates and they pretty much always communicate in that language (causing one person to become fluent, and the other to hardly develop at all), as my wife and I met –each of us having very minimal skill in each other’s language, but both having the desire to learn more — we’ve developed together, and to this day, our conversations bend back and forth between languages.

When we got married, I faced an additional language hurdle. While the lingua franca of Taiwan is Mandarin Chinese, my mother-in-law is one of the few people who does not really speak it (not very comprehensibly, at least). I thus decided, in the interest of family unity (ok, more like sucking up to the mother-in-law) to learn some Taiwanese. Classes are available, but as you can imagine, compared to Mandarin, interest in learning Taiwanese on the part of most foreigners is minimal to say the least. While the Taiwanese study is ongoing– it’s easily the least-developed language that I claim proficiency in — I noticed some interesting developments from my study of it.
1) I learned Taiwanese through the medium of Mandarin. With the exception of the Japanese class I took in France (which was merely a review of material I had studied before), all beginning language study I had ever done previously had been with English-speaking instructors. While, of course, more advanced classes had taken place entirely in the target language, I had never before had to use one of my acquired languages to learn another, different language. This forcibly caused me to develop my vocabulary in Mandarin to include metalinguistic concepts in order to understand and ask questions about language rules, systems, etc. If I couldn’t phrase a question in Mandarin, I simply couldn’t ask… This was highly motivating.

2) My Taiwanese study dramatically increased the perception of me as a “local.” In Taiwan, for around 60% of the population, Taiwanese is the familiar language of the home. While many younger people may speak very little, it’s use still signifies a certain level of intimacy. Outside of the southern regions of the island (where Taiwanese is often dominant), it is unlikely to hear anyone under the age of 50 or so speaking Taiwanese outside of family/close friend interactions. You hardly ever hear it on the street, and a lot of foreigners are scarcely aware of its existence (outside of a few slang-y expressions). My ability to speak (however limited) in Taiwanese greatly helped me to be accepted as more than just a visitor. It allowed me to interact on a more personal level. I found that, in my wife’s hometown, most people my age and younger really didn’t “speak” Taiwanese so much as intersperse it with Mandarin. That level of proficiency was easy enough to reach, and it lent an air of authenticity to my interactions with locals.

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That’s more or less the sum of my language learning experiences. While I’m sure I’ve rambled a bit, hopefully, you’ve been able to identify some similarities with your own learning, or to get ideas of how to further your FL studies…