How Can Independent Travelers Overcome Language Barriers and Foreign Cultures?

The word “travel” makes so many people yearn for it.

The place Mizuc most wants to go is Antarctica and Mt. Everest; Wanzhen has dreamed since childhood of going to Egypt.

My friend Jinlong once wanted to follow two tantric monks far away to Tibet; the Japanese girl Chie most wants to go to Mt. Titlis in Engelberg, Switzerland, to snowboard her beloved board. Even my junior high math teacher took pleasure in collecting travel visas.

But when a person travels abroad independently, the local language is always the first thing considered — even the main reason some people back out.

I wonder if you’ve also ever hesitated because of an unfamiliar language?

Mizuc’s long experience traveling has given me some personal views on unfamiliar foreign languages, which I’d like to share here.

Culture, Culture, Culture! It’s So Important I’ll Say It Three Times

Even if a person doesn’t understand the local language of the country they’re visiting at all, different social cultures will give rise to different ways of coping for travelers. Therefore, how to diligently master the culture actually becomes a bigger subject for travelers than language.

For example, when traveling to Thailand, have you noticed that many locals have severe nearsightedness?

If you think that shoving a dictionary or a prepared travel plan at them will let them understand and smoothly solve your problem, that’s a very common travel misconception.

And the proportion of them wearing glasses is definitely lower than you’d imagine — even if he’s a driver (shocking).

Do You Have to Learn the Foreign Language First Before Traveling?

So must you learn the local language to have a smooth trip?

Mizuc thinks not — foreign languages can never be fully learned.

If you’re willing, learning a few more basic phrases has some benefits during travel.

For example, basic phrases like hello, thank you, sorry, how much, and numbers.

Besides the practical benefit of these toddler-level simple phrases, as long as you’re willing to first speak the other person’s familiar language — even just one or two sentences, even if they can tell at once you’re not a local — most people are still more willing to help (it feels a bit like helping a stray cat).

Conversely, if you think that English alone can get you anywhere in the world (American imperialism), then in aloof France or Russia you’ll run into an infinite number of hard walls.

Not to mention that in many countries people’s English is worse than yours.

There’s a travel joke that goes: “If you go to France but don’t know French, no one will pay attention to you if you speak English to a Frenchman. You have to ask like this: ‘Do you speak Chinese?’ Only then will the proud Frenchman, because he truly doesn’t understand, be willing to be humble.”

Language will never deliberately block you from becoming a traveler. The real confusion is your misunderstanding of yourself as a person.

Travel is a mirror that reflects all your courage and fear.

Traveling alone lets you discover your shortcomings and experience the many joys of life.

Yes, travel is wonderful.

With sunshine, air, and travel, the best life is nothing more than this.

There’s an old saying in photography: the key to taking a good photo isn’t the equipment, but the mind behind the viewfinder.

Good equipment can produce high-resolution commercial images, but to take a good photo, you can only rely on the embodiment of thought that moves people’s hearts.

Traveling

An Unfamiliar Foreign Language Is Not a Problem

Whether a foreign language is unfamiliar has never been a problem for true independent backpackers.

After all, being able to master more than eight different countries’ languages like my mother’s friend (master level) is inherently a high-difficulty intellectual accomplishment.

The key to dealing with an unfamiliar language still lies in how we master the culture and our own ability to solve problems in reality.

Food, clothing, housing, transportation, education, and entertainment — the six words we learned since childhood actually truly encompass most of our human physiological and psychological needs, a common sense internalized deep in our thoughts.

Unless you’re a Martian, this kind of common sense won’t change no matter which land you walk on. This is also the key that lets you travel (live) smoothly in every country: “concept” (life idiots, shoo).

Whether traveling abroad or within your own country, unless you keep randomly grabbing passersby to chat, we only need to open our mouths for “one purpose” — which is also the main function for which language was invented: “purposeful communication.”

If you don’t believe it, you can try going around the island without speaking a word from start to finish — I believe you can still get home safely.

The reason is that you already know your own country’s culture deeply.

You know how to take the MRT and the train, you know the meaning of platforms and timetables, you know how to swipe the EasyCard, so you can move freely between cities large and small.

You can read a map, know where you are, and know which transportation you need to take to reach the next place, so you can make the other person understand your destination without saying a word.

You can read the dish names at street stalls, know the ordering procedure at McDonald’s, understand how dishes are cooked and how ingredients are used, so you’ll never go hungry.

You know the meaning of numbers and how to operate a calculator, so you can enthusiastically haggle with vendors at a rural dusk market.

You even know where street racers like to go, know what scenes horror movies love to use, know the relationship between the environment and the broken windows effect, so you’ll safely avoid dangerous dark alleys and slums.

I specifically use slums as an example not because they’re necessarily high-crime or harsh environments, but because Mizuc himself often wanders into them by mistake.

How a travel bunny who blunders into the big bad wolf (slums, dark alleys) can escape

These tools that let you successfully complete every trip rely not on language, but on your life experience — which is mostly universal around the world (part of the credit goes to the diverse culture we’ve been exposed to in the Republic of China since childhood).

Since you can be a player in your own country, and surely play better than Mizuc (I only go to mountains and seasides, places with no people, whether domestic or abroad), then other countries certainly won’t stump you either.

Having said all this, I wonder if you’re now willing to abandon your fear of various unfamiliar foreign languages and join us in freely traveling this world?

What’s more, besides your familiar mother tongue, you actually possess a language talent you don’t even know about — one you can only discover by going abroad!

That is the performance-filled “sign language” (poke poke belly)!

Conclusion

The point of this article is to tell you not to give up enjoying travel just because you can’t communicate in the language.

But if you can exchange information and share experiences with other backpacker travelers while traveling abroad, I believe it’s absolutely worth your time to learn English (at least) to a certain level.

Sometimes at a guest house, or in a tour group you casually join locally abroad, people from different countries gather together and can chat a few words and share their life experiences — which actually fills your trip with more memories.