Foreign Languages
A few people collect foreign languages like old cars, but
many of us struggle abroad because of the language
challenges. The following are our tips for learning enough of a foreign language to
survive or how to manage if you don't.
The topics included are:
-Our varying approaches to the language problem
-"Rick Steves' Phrase Book & Dictionary" for the western European languages
-The "Teach Yourself Starter Kit" audio series
-Using the environment as your tutor
-Asking for help
-Electronic dictionary & conjugator
-Writing it down
-Studying on the bike
-Our top pick for one second language in Europe: German
Our Approaches
How we cope with a given language barrier varies with our
prior experience with the language, the inherent difficulty of the language for
English speakers, and how long we expect to be
in the country. Our poorest performance is with languages that are utterly
baffling to us like Greek, Turkish, Icelandic, and the Slavic languages.
Where those languages are spoken we heavily rely on English, Bill's improving
German, or writing words down on a sheet of paper in lieu of speaking. Our
minimum resource is the several pages of vocabulary and pronunciation tips in
the back of our Lonely Planet guide book for the given country. We may or may not have a
separate phrase
book, with its usefulness being highly dependent on its format.
Except for the most difficult languages, we strive to
speak and recognize at least 40 words. Those carefully chosen words are the basics like:
"hello, please, thank you, excuse me, left, right, straight ahead, toilets,
hotel, campground, bicycle, 1, 2, 3, and bread." Our 40 words allow us to
maneuver on the sidewalk as pedestrians, ask for directions, locate lodging and
to do basic shopping--anything more is gravy. Again, we are using our guide book's
vocabulary section and perhaps a
phrase book for our tutoring.
For French, German, Spanish, and Italian we apply
ourselves to speaking at least a handful of complete sentences. Between us, we
have some prior experience with the first 3 of those 4 languages and the
similarities between Italian and Spanish make Italian within reach. For these
more accessible
languages, we pick-up additional compact and appealing learning aids as we find
them.
But regardless of the country or language, we are quite clear
that the ability to communicate is more than knowing the language. We can have a
satisfying exchange or get answers to our questions with no shared language if
we and the other speaker are motivated and resourceful. Being willing to try to
communicate is more important for everyday situations than an extensive
vocabulary.
Rick Steves' Phrase Book & Dictionary
The details can make or break the usefulness of a phrase
book and I've given up trying to use more than one that I've purchased abroad.
But I love my "Rick Steves' Spanish Phrasebook & Dictionary".
The weight of the paper and print size make the pages easy to read; his
phonetic system is more intuitive for me than others; and he gives the phonetics
for
entire phrases so I can relatively easily spew out a sentence or short paragraph when
needed. The layout of the book takes some getting used to but of the half dozen other brands
I've tried, this is definitely my favorite. The Spanish book is my first of his
books but
I'll be buying the others. His series includes individual books for French,
German, Italian and Portuguese plus a combined book with French, Italian and
German. Our Spanish book cost $8. Be
sure to buy before you leave the States as I haven't seen his books distributed abroad.
The "Teach Yourself Starter Kit" Series
The "Teach Yourself Starter Kit" (www.teachyourself.co.uk) is the first self-teaching system that I've been
able to stick with. I like it because it is stripped down to the bare bones and
emphasizes speaking in traveler's situations instead of classroom settings.
The 7 week Spanish course requires practicing with a CD about
10 minutes a day and includes pre-made flashcards and 2 small booklets. The
emphasis is on speaking, not writing, but their approach works well for visual
learners like myself and not just auditory learners . The course only teaches 9 verbs and
drops the familiar-you form so you
learn 4 forms of each verb instead of the usual 6. And the course focuses on traveler's
vocabulary, skipping the "Hello, my name is...." which almost all courses begin
with and we virtually never use as a travelers--"Where are the toilets?" comes
up much more often.
We bought this UK-produced course in Spain and found it
painless
to integrate into our traveling day. The audio on the CD's was a huge help with
pronunciation and the low demand of the course left us with enthusiasm to
fill-in other words on our own. This CD-based course combined with the "Rick Steves' Phrase Book & Dictionary" put us on a lighthearted, fast-track for learning
traveler's Spanish. It left us eager to learn more and to practice speaking rather than frustrating
us
with too many details.
We carry a laptop computer with us on our travels so we
already had the needed hardware for the CD's. For most travelers it would make more sense
to spend 2 months working through the exercises before traveling and
use a phrase book to quench your thirst for more information. That way you'd have the course
behind you when you arrived in the country and would already know your way
around your phrase
book. (Powell's Books and Barnes & Noble carry some of the products in the "Teach Yourself"
series.)
Using the Environment as Your Tutor
When it comes to learning a little bit of a foreign language, my forte is definitely
using the visual environment--the billboards and signs--to build my vocabulary. I
want to communicate more quickly than I can learn verb conjugations so I prefer
my own verb-less "Noun & Point" system. I learn the nouns and rely heavily on
pointing at objects to fill-in the missing words. Of course, that doesn't work
as well on the phone, but almost all of our traveling communication is face to
face.
Signs and billboards are great prompts as they are the words
actually used in the region and are often accompanied by descriptive graphics.
Sometimes the words in
phrase books aren't what are really used, as we found in Czech Republic for the
word for "train." So, scrutinizing signs and their associated symbols
makes a
great starting point for selecting relevant nouns to learn. Each night I check
our phrase book for the exact meaning and the pronunciation of my newly gathered
nouns. For me, that keeps the learning practical and easy.
Multi-lingual food labels and menus are another way to
collect the words most important to you. Usually the ingredients or descriptors
are listed in the same order in each language so you can readily get rough
translations. I record important new words in my handheld computer so I have
them available. Even if most of your food comes from eateries, a study session in the food
market can quick generate your "Definitely Yes" and "Definitely No" ingredients
list for your next look at a menu.
Our latest discovery was a quick way to learn numbers. We had
the basics of the Spanish numbers down but we were still very slow and clumsy
with them. One afternoon we started saying out loud any number we saw on the
road and since we were climbing up steep hills, we had plenty of time on our
hands to contemplate them. The road had an abundance of route number markers,
speed signs and single digits on small posts. We stopped a couple of times to
check our accuracy and pronunciation in our phrase book and both our skill and confidence skyrocketed with the
environmentally-cued drilling.
In less than an hour we were onto the car license plates that each had 4
digits. We first called out the single digits, then 2 pairs of numbers and
then all 4 digits as a single number. I was stunned that evening when for the
first time I understood all 4 digits of a spoken price--before playing our road
game I was lucky to capture the first digit. We can hardly wait to move on to
another accessible language and play our number game with it. Bill even did some numbers in
both Spanish and German just to keep his German active and his mind agile.
Asking For Help
We are also getting bolder about using the people around
us to teach us their language. Usually we limit our requests for help to one word per
person. Even if a hotel or store clerk doesn't speak English, we can often
solicit their help in learning the proper word for an object or in correcting
our pronunciation. Our room number in a hotel and a produce item in a market
are easy words to ask for. And clarifying the
proper pronunciation for our destination town for the day is a huge help in
asking for directions once out on the road as well as reinforcing the pronunciation
rules.
A couple of times we have paid for an hour of tutoring--once
at a language school and once from a college student working at an internet
shop. Each time we prepared a list of the words we need help pronouncing and the
phrases we need constructed. A critical phrase for us that
doesn't show up in the books is "Do you have a safe place to keep our bikes
overnight?" Getting the idiomatic phrase for that concept is a huge help in
selecting lodging and keeping our bikes secure. Another one that seems unnecessarily difficult to get
across is "We need to pay for using the telephone in our room," so we ask for
help with that phrase also. Of course at the language school the teacher couldn't
resist conjugating a few verbs for us and teaching us to introduce ourselves.
 |
Electronic Dictionary & Conjugator
We have dictionaries and verb conjugators for several
foreign languages on our handheld computers. Bill started using these electronic
reference books
several years ago when studying French and found them worth the price. The
expensive
Collin's products are his favorite dictionaries, which run $35-40 each. The conjugators
are from Beiks Ltd costing about $15 per language. Both product lines can be
purchased from the web. The conjugator gives you all possible verb
forms in all the tenses used in the given language. I use the dictionary far
more than the conjugator but both are especially helpful in dealing with
situations that go beyond the realm of phrase books. Coming up with the
right word when dealing with a pharmacist or doctor can be critical, as well as
simpler situations like asking for packing tape or a 9 speed bike chain. And the
electronic dictionary is invaluable in deciphering the less obvious words in museum
exhibits and on food labels.
Write it Down
Once you've settled on an effective way to say something,
write it down so you can refer back to it. I stash key phrases on my handheld
computer so it is there a couple years later--much better archiving than scraps of paper.
I have single phrases, full sentences and even a few scripts. My longest script
is for reserving a hotel room in Spanish by phone and it includes: "Do you have a room for
2 people for 1 night. How much is it? Is the tax included? Is breakfast
included? Does it have heating? We have 2 bikes, do you have a safe place for
them? We will arrive on -- day and leave on -- day." And if I'm doing the
transaction in person "May I see the room?"
Of course, some languages are just too overwhelming to
pronounce more than a few polite words, so we rely on having people read notes
we have written. Again, we use phrase books and bilingual speakers to generate
our basic scripts for securing lodging. Write your letters big so they can be read by people who don't keep
their glasses handy, perhaps leaving in a blank for the price to be written in. We also sometimes write down the names of towns we are
heading to as our slight mispronunciations can be catastrophic in some areas.
And of course in those countries we do a lot of pointing and grunting in the
markets and when obtaining directional help.
Studying on the Bike
We had amazing success with learning the basics of
Spanish in 2004 by combining appealing resource materials with being more
creative about using our study time on the bike. Bill has diligently memorized 5
new German words a day for hundreds of days of travel but found our new approach
with Spanish much more effective.
We jokingly referred to our new strategy as "Sandbox Spanish"
or "Circus Spanish" as the emphasis was on keeping it playful so we would stay
with it. We took turns selecting 3 to 6 new words each day but always looked
for a gimmick--something to amuse the mind. It might be a short sentence where
almost all the words began with "P;" 3 or 4 words that differed by only a
letter; or creating a translation for a cliché or phrase like "easy come, easy
go" or "for better or worse." We always tried to capitalize on the brain's
natural love of jokes, puns and humor to facilitate the learning and then pushed
ourselves to create sentences with the new words. Our goal was to keep speaking
and use the new words with an emphasis on communication rather than correctness.
We were stunned at how rapidly our working vocabulary rose
into the hundreds of words in only a few weeks and it was primarily because we
kept it fun. Our struggle to make sentences would send us to our electronic dictionaries at
lunch time to locate critical vocabulary words we were missing. Some days we'd
learn 15 new words because we needed them-- because we wanted them for our little
conversations and stories we were crafting as we rode. I imagined it was like an
alternative educational system that is student-curiosity-driven as we were learning what
we felt a need for and as a result both our retention and the volume learned soared.
I also think there was some magic to doing our Spanish
practice sessions on the bike. I suspect that our relatively low intensity road
riding made our minds more receptive to learning and less subject to boredom
compared with the usual study situations. Road riding (as opposed to a
stationery bike) demands alertness to maintain balance, keep an eye on the
traffic, and watch for changes in the road surface but under good conditions
there is still a lot of brain power left unused. Since almost all of our riding is
done at a modest level of exertion, that remaining ability to focus doesn't get
'snowed' by endorphins. Regardless of the reason, we were stunned at the
progress we made by doing most of our Spanish practice while riding.
German as a Second Language
If you are traveling broadly in Europe, English and
German are the 2 most useful languages from our experience. American movies, the
internet and the formation of the EU have all supported the spread of English,
though outside the tourist areas it can be hard to find a willing English
speaker.
French is not spoken widely out of France, though it shows up
in corners of Belgium and Switzerland and a few other places. Spanish and
Italian are also pretty much confined to their countries, though learning one
makes it easy to get by with the other. German however is spoken in Germany,
Austria, and the Netherlands and is the traditional travelers language in the
eastern European countries like Poland and the Czech Republic. German speakers
are avid travelers, so their language shows up in unexpected places, like
Croatia and the resort areas of many countries. And we were shocked that more than
one person working in a field in Turkey spoke German because of their recent
history as a guest worker in Germany. Bill had taken up French in
anticipation of our our travels but quickly switched to reviving his high school German
because of its greater usefulness.
That's it for how we've learned to get by abroad with the language problems--please email us if you have other ways of managing or favorite resources that we've missed.
