Learning a language can be highly interesting and satisfying. At school, it’s generally forced down our throats, as this is part of the curriculum.
If you’re lucky, you may actually enjoy it and benefit from it. Hopefully, later on, you might remember a smattering of that language next time you’re on holiday.
It should at least open your mind to the existence of other cultures, other visions of life, other people who speak a foreign language. In their eyes, you’re the one who speaks a foreign language.
Most people these days speak English to a certain degree. Of course, there are places where English-speakers are not necessarily easy to come by.
It can be tempting not to make the slightest effort in learning the language of the country you’re visiting.
This is where it can be beneficial to make that ‘minimum’ of effort and put together your survival vocab list. Otherwise, you might spend your time as a spectator who just observes and does not participate or interact.
Of course, there’s survival and there’s survival: as a European, visiting Spain or Italy, surviving is not out of our reach. However, it might be a different story if you go to Laos or Niger, Yemen, Honduras, The Sudan or Japan, to name but a few.
The cultural differences can become enormous, the further afield we travel.
Getting your survival-list together is worth it.
It will never be exhaustive, but it may just save your bacon in desperate times.
Your Survival List
I remember travelling around India with a mate. Wow! What an experience! What an eye-opener! And on so many levels. You’d often see Opulence just next to abject poverty. The haves and the have-nots.
That was the beginning of the 90s. What surprised me most, was the number of people we met, who didn’t actually speak English. Obviously, in major cities, there were more people who spoke fluent English than say in the countryside.
Times have no doubt changed since then. Of course, we survived.
Greetings
Just like anywhere, it is essential to know a few greetings in the local language.
Good Day. Good Morning. Good Evening. Good Night. Hello. Good-bye. Please. Thank you.
Your biggest fear is that if you speak the lingo, the locals will start speaking to you in that language. Shocker! They soon realize your limitations in the language and it’s nothing to be ashamed of, not grasping a single word that the person is speaking.
But it can break the ice. Most people are happy to hear people making an effort.
It’s also in your interest to get a phonetic phrase book and highlight a few expressions:
May I have….?
I would like…
How do I get to……?
Where is the toilet?
Where is the bank, the train station, the bus station, the river?
Where is the Post Office (that was in the days of Poste Restantes).
Then it became: Where is the nearest Cybercafé
Nowadays: May I have access to your Wi-Fi
Who knows what it will be in the future….
Survival Verbs
Knowing a few verbs is A MUST for survival:
to be, to have, to go
to eat, to drink, to sleep
to take, To speak, to turn, to see
to be able to (can), to have to (must), to need
You don’t need to be able to fully conjugate each verb.
If you know the the verb, then you’re off to the races.
Knowing how to conjugate the present tense for ‘I’, You, We, He, She is simply a massive bonus. Congratulate yourself!
Be Polite
Don’t forget that people will judge you by the respect that you show them and other people around them. There is nothing worse than acting like an entitled, demanding and disrespectful individual. What goes around, comes around!
Instant Karma (We All Shine On)
Instant Karma’s gonna get you
Gonna knock you right on the head……
John Lennon
Know Your Numbers
Knowing a few numbers can quicken up communication:
Learn to count from 1 to 10 and why not master your multiples of 10s and 100s… 20 30 40 50 100 500 1000…and so on….
I remember hopping on a few buses around Mumbai (Bombay). Guess what! The bus numbers were in Hindi script. You’d been told that bus number such-and-such will take you to such-and-such a place. But that doesn’t help when you realize you forgot to learn your numbers! Let alone recognise them in Hindi script.
It didn’t take long to learn and to be able to recite the numbers. Here they are just for good measure. I purposely put the hindi script, but have to admit, I didn’t get that far in my learning process, lol!
(0) शून्य (śhūnya)
१ (1) एक (ek)
२ (2) दो (do)
३ (3) तीन (tīn)
४ (4) चार (chār)
५ (5) पांच (pāṅch)
६ (6) छह (chah)
७ (7) सात (sāt)
८ (8) आठ (āṭh)
९ (9) नौ (nau)
१० (10) दस (das)
११ (11) ग्यारह (gyārah)
१२ (12) बारह (bārah)
१३ (13) तेरह (tērah)
१४ (14) चौदह (chaudah)
१५ (15) पंद्रह (paṅdrah)
१६ (16) सोलह (solah)
१७ (17) सत्रह (satrah)
१८ (18) अठारह (aṭhārah)
१९ (19) उन्नीस (unnīs)
२० (20) बीस (bīs)
Making that small effort to learn basic counting in Hindi was exhilarating for me. It was so awesome, just to be able to recognize numbers. It’s like learning music theory (le solfège in French, il solfeggio in Italian), where all of a sudden, a whole new world of symbols starts to reveal its secrets.
Communication
You have to overcome that initial fear of not understanding and not being understood. You have to accept that your accent is probably appalling and amusing to the listener, but you just have to babble your way through the sentence and have a go.
Who cares when they reply in rapid-fire syllables and you grasp not a word of what they are saying.
What counts is that you are communicating and interacting and so are they. And that is where the magic can come into play.
It’s likely to be a one-way exercise and it may take a few gestures to make yourself understood, but in the end, you’ll survive. And you’ll probably enjoy your stay all the more.
Resources
How To Learn Hindi : https://www.wikihow.com/Learn-Hindi
I’d love to hear about your experiences of visiting a country and not understanding and not being understood. Did you put together a survival list of vocab or did you just wing it?
Have you read our piece on Slang In Everyday Language ?
