When we travel, we have an opportunity to fundamentally change the way we interact with local people and get to know their culture. How?
By learning their language.
As tourists we are simply observers, forever on the outside looking in. We don’t participate in day-to-day local life and are never mistaken for locals when the extent of our interaction is ordering food or visiting local attractions.
But if we learn the language of the country, suddenly that country is wide open to us. We pick up on rhythms that aren’t normally detectable.
Yes learning a new language is hard and takes time and motivation. But how can you sink your teeth into a foreign culture otherwise?
Modern global tourism doesn’t connect people from country to country, culture to culture, but instead, widens pre-existing gaps. The best way to get past our limited surface perceptions of another culture is to make the effort to communicate in the language of that culture. The biggest challenge for English speakers is that English is widely spoken. But that shouldn’t stop us. You can explain (in English if you
have to) that you are learning the language and would like to avoid English. How will they will respond? Someone from the wider English-speaking world wants to learn their local language? They’ll be thrilled.
The rewards of understanding and making yourself understood in a foreign language are immense. Learning a new language also opens us up in countless ways so we see the world from new and fresh angles. It allows us to truly live in the place we’re visiting, keeping in mind that we can only connect so much when the time limit is a two-week vacation. Nevertheless, most of us want to make authentic connections with locals. Now is the time to re-evaluate the nature of our relationships to each other across cultures. A more multilingual world will go a long way to strengthening the bonds between us.
Go deeper with a language learning vacation.