If you are passionate about traveling, then it’s likely that the most cherished memories are those of associating with the locals. This is what opens up opportunities to understand different cultures around the globe.
But for this to effortlessly happen, and without any hint of a language barrier, it’s important that your language bank be rich. This piece will help to equip you with important aptitudes on how to learn a new language and the various ways it can help to improve your experiences while traveling overseas.
How Learning a New Language Can Better Your Overseas Travel Experiences
Adding a new language to the list of tongues you can speak can come with many advantages. Besides helping you communicate, socialize, and possibly attract business opportunities, two things stand out as far as learning a new language and traveling are concerned:
1. It’s Easier to Get Around
If you are the type of person who even while jet lagged will want to move around, then this is for you. It can be a painstaking experience not knowing how to ask for directions in a foreign land. Knowing the basic terms to use can help make it easy for you to explore different places and make your travel experiences overseas epic.
2. It’s A Great Way to Create Lasting Memories
The desire and motivation to speak to the locals in their language is not only exciting, but it also helps to bring you closer to them. This is often a satisfying experience that may forever be engraved in your mind.
Besides creating lasting travel memories, perfecting a new language is also a gateway to building new connections as you’ll be making friends with the locals effortlessly.
And you never know, you could make friends that may help polish your language skills even more, if not suggest other adventurous destinations you could visit for fun while creating lifelong memories!
Fun Ways to Learn a New Language During Travel
1. Listen to language learning podcasts (repeatedly)
Podcasts are a fun way to explore a topic you like, get new information, and even learn something new. Many of them are exciting enough to bring energy into a long and rather boring trip. It might surprise you how many recorded and live language lessons are available online, on CDs, and on tapes these days.
2. Watch foreign language movies with subtitles
Many people struggle to keep up with movies recorded in a foreign language – and that’s understandable. But as long as it’s interesting, such a film becomes a bit easier to follow if subtitles (or translations) in a language you understand are included.
This is perhaps why TV shows like Money Heist (La Casa De Papel) managed to take the world by storm despite being written in Spanish! And there’s a big chance it helped a lot of people around the world learn a tiny bit of Spanish words!
3. Take Advantage of Online Language Courses
Besides online translators and dictionaries, the internet is full of website platforms and mobile apps that provide language lessons.
For instance, you can learn to speak Spanish with Lingoda, an online language learning platform that helps you learn several international languages. Whether you’re interested in learning German, Spanish, English, or French the internet lets you do so from the comfort of your home.
Hey, It’s Not All About the Language
You want the locals to know that you are and have been trying to learn their language. Yes, speaking fluently can be okay.
But when there’s a hint of someone struggling with the language here and there, it would be a fulfilling experience to ask for help and get it. It’s not a crime to make mistakes as long as you have the willingness to learn and perfect them.
As you plan to travel overseas, learning a language or two won’t hurt. In an actual sense, you might need it more than you think, and you might even have more fun doing it during your trip.
