The language of travel

Do you speak multiple languages? I unfortunately only speak English fluently – although not from lack of trying! I’m just not one of those people who picks up languages easily regardless of how much I study.

I started out in elementary school learning French, but by the time I got to college I was thoroughly sick of re-reading Le Petit Prince every time I got a new French teacher (8 times. Yes. EIGHT!), so I switched to Spanish. My Spanish teacher said I had the best French accent… while speaking Spanish… she’d ever heard. Ugh. Not exactly what I was going for. So then I had the brilliant idea to try something completely different and learn German. It was really different, and interesting, but also really difficult for someone who has only ever studied romance languages. 

Finally, a few years ago, I decided to give in and go back to French because it is the language that I am most familiar with. But still, after studying it off and on for 20+ years now I struggle to speak it. I can understand quite a bit though! Every time I stop studying/practicing because life gets too chaotic, I have to re-learn/re-remember everything all over again. But I refuse to give up. I am determined that some day I will fluently speak a second language. Now that I’m in Paris, you would think it would be so much easier to learn… but while my French is getting better, it is still definitely not fluent since I use English most of the day. That said, my food and wine vocabulary is pretty impressive!

But even if I’m not fluent in a language, I like to try to learn the basics before I travel. For most Western European languages, that is fairly straightforward since they have the same basic alphabet. Trips to Asia have been a bit more difficult though, and Egypt was by far the most intimidating language-wise! The one key takeaway from my trip to Egypt? Make sure you write down where you are trying to get to or have your guide book ready so you can point to it… BUT also make sure that you write it down or it is written in the guide book using the local script/alphabet not just the Latin Script Alphabet or “romanization”, because the random person the street you ask for directions or taxi driver you are trying to communicate with may only be able to read the Arabic Script version. For example, when were trying to get to the Mosque of Ibn Tulun, we tried pointing to it in our guidebook both in English and using the romanization of the Arabic “Masjid Ibn Ṭūlūn”  but it wasn’t until we found it written somewhere (not obvious) in the guide book in actual Arabic script that the driver knew where to take us: مسجد إبن طولون‎  *

The last time I traveled to Italy, I took an “Italian for Traveler’s” class in order to learn a few more words than what I’ve used in the past – i.e. vino (wine), rosso (red), bianco (white), gelato (ice cream), gabinetto (toilet), per favore (please), grazie (thank you) and some others. I definitely appreciated the language and understood more when I was traveling after that!

It’s amazing how fluent I am at asking for a glass of wine in several different languages…

Do you try to learn some of the local language before you travel? I’ve long since exchanged a physical language dictionary with an app, what do you use?