Ive just been glancing at a thread about learning spanish for traveling and got thinking about which are the most useful languages for a traveler.

I realize that it depends on your destination but as a general concept...
my idea; english, spanish, and then what??

English, Spanish and then Russian.


Incidentally, French that used to be the language of choice for diplomacy is less useful for that purpose nowadays, but would serve a purpose in bits of Africa and some polynesian islands.

__________________
Dave

To suit my needs German (the country I'm visiting has probably been invaded by Germany at some point, (either with Panzers or beach towels) and one of the Slavic languages (they're pretty much interchangeable).

Nowadays, in most European countries there are many who can speak English, in the case of the Germans and the Dutch, for instance, they know the grammar more so than many native English and Americans.
e.g. Plenty of French can speak English pretty well but won't admit it in public.

In my consideration for my answer I thought about Japanese and Chinese, but, on balance, settled for Russian because of the Cyrillic script which makes it OK for most Slavs.
Arabic was another consideration, but it is very "regionalised" compared with the top 3 of my last post.

__________________
Dave

Money

And Caribbean (Haiti) Islands as well.
French can be quite useful in both Vietnam and Cambodia. I even saw menus in restaurants in French. I did not visit Laos, but perhaps some French spoken?
But as time goes on ... and further we get from colonial days ... French will become less common.

Cyrillic might look hard, but its easily taught. Especially when you are in a country with cyrillic is written everywhere you can pick it up quite quickly with a small phrasebook. Just keep practicing and as it turns out the words are rather similar to what you know, in Bulgarian at least.

For example; "картофи" might look completely foreign. After you learn how to pronounce it you end up with "Kartofi", which is similar to the German "Kartoffel" and as it turns out does mean potato!

No need if your a Brit, just follow standard protocol.................

If your not understood the first time say it again, but this time LOUDER & SLOOOWEEEER

That really is a question.


As you speak English as your starter language. Your half way to speaking to most of the world. If a German is in Greece and want's to talk to a Greek. They will both speak in English. So what it you are in the back of nowhere. Latin may be not a bad idea. As six to four there will be a priest that will speak it. So that could get you out of trouble. And most Languages are built up round Latin. But on a more serous note, Spanish is not a bad second choice. As for German be careful. I was station out there for three years. Picked up the language, lived on the German Dutch border. When in a training exercise in the northern part of Germany. In the a local bar. Trying out my German, no one understood me, reverted back to English. A little while later on a German came up and started to talk to us. Told us where we had come from, and he understood what we where saying. It turned out what we where speaking was a language called plat German. Only spoken in the area where we where living. The best I could make out, it was a kind of Dutch German cross. So be careful of German, and you don't fall in-to the trap me and all the other English people who lived there did.


Apart from that, I can't be of any more help.
John933

__________________
To buy petrol in Europe. Pull up at station. Wait. Get out a 20 Euro note, then ask someone to fill up the bike. Give person money. Ride away. Simple.

Spanish is the same, those in rural areas speak dialects which very enough per area often they have trouble understanding each other.
Even those educated will have varying difficulty. It seems that Spanish people can understand Mexicans, and Mexicans have trouble with spaniards and even Cubans, go figure. Toss Portuguese into the mix and the world is very different.

I found that while living in Denmark and trying to speak their language, they would take horrible advantage of me as the token tourist. I found the same in Russia.
A better solution was to simply listen, maybe only say a couple words and simply do my thing.

I kind of go by what a friend told me years ago, who said '' I speak no other languages but understand them all''. I think once you travel enough you figure out how to communicate to a degree without speaking their language. It is also nonsense to think we will all learn every language we need to while travelling.
With that said I am happy my daughter is being raised speaking multiple languages.

Edit: I am surprised nobody has brought it up, but now with various programs one can simply take a picture of a sign etc and get a instant translation. For the love of god you can even get the phonetic pronunciation while trying to speak to someone.
IMO, it takes all the fun out of being lost, not knowing a language, being unable to read and trying to figure things out.

Very true with English - I sat in a hotel in Shanghai a few years ago and overheard Indian and Chinese businessmen conducting some kind of business purchasing arrangement in English, the one language they had in common. Similarly, a year or two back I was behind a Japanese businessman checking into a hotel in Germany and he was talking to the receptionist in English.

I spent a few years being taught (as opposed to learning!) Latin at school. A few years later, on one of our early bike trips, we were stuck in Italy and unable to find anyone who spoke English. In desperation we tried Latin and were understood enough to get things sorted out. We were keeping ancient Greek in reserve in case we had problems in Greece but fortunately didn't need it.

yeh, languages.
as has been said, english is the language to have,
speaking of europe, when two people wot dont speak the same language need to communicate, they usually default to english.

just try to pick up enough to be polite, the hello, please and thankyou.
i usually have at least one funny swear in the language too, when you can say nothing but the most vulgar swear, its funny.

German - seriously?

I think Walkabout is right, English, Spanish and either Russian or French, the latter useful in Africa and the former Central Asia (and Russia obviously!)

English plus a decent smart phone with off-line translation to 50 languages.

__________________
Tony
Click here for Travel Photos & Travel Map