I plan on going abroad in the coming year & want to know enough of the local language to ask basic things. Does anyone know something like 100 or 250 words that I could memorize to get across basic ideas & questions? I don’t care about being grammatical correct just enough to cave man speak during my time there.
Zero.
Communication doesn’t need to be written or verbal. Body language can effectively convey almost all basic human needs and wants.
Instructions unclear. Got my ass kicked due to cultural body language differences.
You know what you did
If you go to the other side of the world, there’s a good chance your actions won’t be understood or might even convey the opposite meaning. Namely, mixing western and Asian body language is messy, depending on how much British colonization happened in the Asian half of the dialogue.
Source: I’ve been to India with Americans that believed they could communicate if they repeated their English statement slower, with the same verbal shortcuts, and angrier. This works in the big cities at customer service. The success rate drops as population density drops.
Toki Pona has 137 words. So that.
I don’t know, but I highly recommend learning the phrase: Sorry, I don’t speak [language], but I speak [language].
The thing is, do you want to talk to people, or understand the answers? Because learning a few phrases is great but if you can’t understand the answers :shrug:
My standard basic phrases are Please; Thank you; Excuse me; I’m sorry; Where’s the bathroom?; and I’m a vegetarian. It’s not elegant, but it covers my most basic needs.
For places I want to go, I have a list in the local language that I can point to, and I learn the basics of written language so I can navigate (maps, store signs, menus, etc). I also watch TV in whatever the language is before I leave, preferably with English subtitles (sometimes that’s a local program, othertimes it’s a US or UK show dubbed into the local language).
Okay.
🤷🏻♂️ 🤔 ✌🏻
You didn’t mention the language, it will be hard for people to answer.
Dude. Dude? Dude! Dude…
Toki pona is a conlang meant to be a simple as possible, and has less than ~150 words. Might be useful to look at those “essential” words.
Toki Pona doesn’t work like that, each word has multiple meanings, it’s made to be generic. For example Tawa means move, go, away, etc and Mi means me, we, us, mine, ours, etc. But Mi Tawa which literary means I go is used to mean Bye. Or Akesi which means disgusting animal or lizard and Linja which means long, flexible, cord, etc. So a Snake is an Akesi Linja.
That…seems like a language i could learn, and could probably be taught in schools as a second language.
I feel like the only reason we use English as much as we do is tradition. Time to break tradition.
To be fair though, speaking as a fan of toki pona, it’s important to point out that it is far from a list of essential words, it’s intentionally not designed to be able to communicate a majority of essential concepts clearly. It’s designed to be able to communicate simple, positive concepts easily, but to require thought and ambiguity to communicate negative or complex concepts. It’s literally meant to make you have to think more positively.
Where is ‘abroad’? Many countries will speak English pretty well, so you may not need it depending on where you are. Any vocab book for that country will give you the basics if English isn’t commonly spoken
Great game to play with friends using a limited vocabulary
I plan on going abroad in the coming year
See world. Oceans. Fish. Jump. China.
The invention of language made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
what is six times nine999999
Depends
That heavily depends on the language
And on the people doing the communicating.
And the complexity of the idea desired to communicate.
