Linguaphobia! Why us?

Below is an excerpt from Breaking the Language Barrier, a book by Georgina Howard, from Pyrenean Experience, which discusses the importance of learning a language to get the most out of our travelling experiences.

Linguaphobia! Why us?

On my travels I meet a stream of intrepid Brits. They trek the Himalayas in thunder storms and raft the Zambezi with the crocodiles and yet,  no matter how extrovert and gregarious they are by nature, one obstacle seems always to obstruct their path – the language barrier.  Lame excuses such as 'my memory is terrible'  or  'I just don't have the ear',  crop up time and time again. To some extent we can blame our colonial past. Rather than adapting to foreign cultures we have forced them to adapt to ours, and suffered the consequences: a national apathy towards the learning of foreign languages.

Yet it is never the apathetic who suffer from phobias. It is those who struggle valiantly to remedy the problem, braving a few phrases of a new language and bracing themselves for the reply which finally comes - broken and faltering perhaps - but almost inevitably in English.   One morning, at a bakers in Copenhagen, I remember asking, in Danish, for a couple of  wienerbrød.[1]  The woman replied in English, I battled on in Danish, she asserted herself in English, I gritted my teeth and pursued the Danish, she gritted hers and pursued the English and so we went on until I finally left the shop. 

One of the great barriers we have to overcome is that most other Europeans are, by necessity,  streets ahead of us in learning foreign languages, and in particular English. Many look for any opportunity to try out their English skills and we - demoralised and deflated – understandably give in.

However, this is not the whole picture. Another reason for our linguaphobia is the simple fact that we know so little about our own language.  Most of us have little idea of how English is made up, we know nothing of  pronouns and prepositions, and the word  grammar strikes a note of horror, recalling images of clinical classrooms and military verb drills. Usually, it is only when we come to learn a foreign language that we gain our first real insight into our mother tongue.  This seems to me a little like putting the cart before the horse or - as they say in Spanish - before the ox  (poner el carro delante de los bueyes)!

Unfortunately, from the point of view of the non-native English speaker our general ignorance of foreign languages is frequently interpreted as arrogance. In learning a few phrases of the local language we offer other cultures an important token of respect and show people that we are prepared to meet them on their terms rather than expect them to surrender to our own. From our perspective, no matter how well other people speak English, the ability to speak their native tongue allows us a far deeper insight into the nuances of their culture and the nature of their values. It enables those wonderful, impromptu conversations with locals in shops, on trains and walks around town, and inevitably enhances our ability to build solid friendships and business relationships.

So brave yourselves for the adventures of learning a foreign language, it can be a fun process (honest) and add a whole new dimension to your travel experiences.

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[1] (What we term Danish pastries, the Danes call Wienerbrød  which translates literally to "Viennese bread" !?)

Five Ways NOT to Speak Spanish in Spain!

Welcome to our first guest blogger post, by Georgina Howard, from Pyrenean Experience, Spanish Language & Walking Holidays in the Pyrenees 

Five Ways NOT  to Speak Spanish in Spain!

We often embark on our holidays with the illusion of picking up a few words in the local lingo .. here, at least, are 5 ways NOT to do it!

One:    Make a bee line for Spanish resorts full of other British people.  Here, you will often find impatient English-speaking shopkeepers and waiters who find nothing amusing in waiting half-an-hour for you to mumble your order in broken Spanish, when a two-minute conversation in English would suffice.

Two:    Head for the large metropolises full of busy people of all nationalities with little time to stop and chat. Over-zealous female Spanish students are in particular danger of being misunderstood; try convincing the taxi driver that you weren’t really after his telephone number and that all you were really interested in was practising your irregular verbs!

Three:  Bury your head in a phrase book. Nothing kills spontaneous, friendly interactions with the locals more than a ten-minute flurry of page-turning in a desperate attempt to find a phrase which almost certainly doesn’t exist (for such is the fame of phrase books). Smile, gesticulate, keep the conversation going in whatever way you can and then, once rapport is created, you can nail them for language practice! 

Four:   Visit Spain with a friend who speaks much better Spanish than you do. It is far too easy to take a back seat and let them do all the talking. And, if you are finally encouraged to speak out alone, the thrill of buying a glass of wine on your own in a Spanish bodega looses its punch with your partner gazing scholarly over your shoulder.

Five:    Spend invaluable holiday time inside a language school with 20 other foreigners and one Spanish teacher.  There is nothing less motivating than studying Spanish grammar inside a sterile classroom in Spain while the bustle of real Spain; sunshine and laughter, cerveza and tapas, pass by mutely on the other side of the window pane.