We should be as blunt as we need to be when admitting this: English-speaking nationalities have a reputation for not being the best when it comes to speaking the language abroad. This isn’t a blanket statement – many of us go to great lengths to dust off our high-school French or find a way to learn as much Korean as we can ahead of a trip – but in many cases, we expect people in other countries to speak English.
There are reasons for this, of course. English is something of a lingua franca, and it’s far from uncommon to hear two people from non-Anglophone countries speaking to one another in English because it’s a language they have in common. Nonetheless, the cliche of an English (or Irish, American, Australian, and so on…) traveler speaking broken English, usually at an elevated decibel level, to a perplexed local, is there for a reason. In order to avoid becoming that person, the following tips are worth paying some attention to.
Speak enough to admit that you can’t speak much
Whatever your level of the local language, it should be agreed that just launching into a monologue in English is rude. If someone walked up to you and started demanding, in Japanese, to buy your car, you’d be bemused, and rightly so. So even if you’re going to have to carry out most conversations in English, it’s worth learning how to explain this to locals and apologise.
“Je suis désolé, je ne parle pas français”
“Beklager, jeg snakker ikke norsk”
“Tôi xin lỗi, tôi không nói được tiếng việt”
You’ll be able to find pronunciaton guides for phrases such as these online, and at the very least, you can type your apology into a translation app on your phone and play the result to the person you’re speaking with. Considering what we’re asking of them in return, it’s the least we can do.
Use online resources to learn the parts you’ll need
There is no end of help online for English speakers who want to step off the beaten track and see new places. There are sites to let you book accommodation without having to go through protracted explanations, you can book tickets for onward travel well in advance, and if you want to work your way around the world, you only need to click here for a resource that will help with that. And of course, there are language learning guides.
The popular language learning apps are genuinely quite good, although they don’t necessarily cover as many languages as they might. However, there will always be an online resource for the necessary parts of the language you need. Nobody is asking you to become fluent in Albanian, but if you’re expecting to do some food shopping while in Tirane, it’s not too much trouble to learn a sentence like “Më falni, ku është supermarketi më i afërt?” and a few other phrases. People will be more helpful if you seem like you’re making an effort.
Train your ears in advance
Most translation apps will feature a pronunciation example for how the language should sound, and it’s worth using these to get some practice in reproducing the sounds a native speaker makes. You can also train your ears to hear the intricacies of pronunciation by listening to the radio or watching TV in the target language. This makes all the difference in helping you turn letters on a page into living, breathing language.
As a tip, it is best to watch or listen to news programmes, as these will often report events that are attracting global attention and some words and names that are familiar. Not only will it give you some more exposure to the language and help you make sense of it, but it will also help you be better understood when you attempt to speak it.
