Travel Language Hacks: Unlocking New Experiences Abroad
00:00:00.000 | I know a lot of the podcasts we talk about travel, I know a lot of our listeners love
00:00:04.300 | to travel.
00:00:05.300 | And so one of the times people are often most excited to learn a language is that, you know,
00:00:09.360 | maybe they planned a trip or they have this, like you said, in China, a vision for a trip
00:00:12.960 | they want to take.
00:00:15.000 | Not everyone who is planning a trip to a foreign country necessarily feels like they need to
00:00:20.560 | become fluent.
00:00:22.120 | Is there a stop along the way where you can have enough kind of skills in a language to
00:00:29.160 | have a different experience traveling and unlock, you know, really interesting things
00:00:35.080 | that you can get to a lot quicker and any advice for someone in that situation?
00:00:39.520 | When it comes to language levels, there is a lot of specificity with this, and this is
00:00:44.200 | something I take into account with my targets.
00:00:46.800 | So I always work off the European Common Framework, which has a very specific way of categorizing
00:00:53.000 | language levels.
00:00:54.200 | It splits it into A, B, and C, and within each one, it further sub splits it into one
00:00:59.800 | and two.
00:01:00.840 | So A is beginner, B is intermediate, C is advanced, one is lower, two is upper.
00:01:07.060 | So A2 means you're an advanced beginner and C1 means you're a lower level mastery speaker
00:01:15.280 | of the language.
00:01:16.280 | So this scale of six different levels is where I pin everything.
00:01:21.120 | So for me, fluency begins at the B2 level.
00:01:24.880 | This is upper intermediate.
00:01:26.760 | So what that means is you can talk about most things you would talk about in casual social
00:01:32.480 | situations, but because you're not at the C levels, you don't have a mastery level.
00:01:37.800 | So in my case, I studied engineering.
00:01:40.080 | So the languages I have a C level at, I could work as an engineer in those languages and
00:01:45.920 | I could have a philosophical conversation with you about very deep subjects.
00:01:50.680 | And for the most part, most conversations I'm going to have are the high level B2 social
00:01:56.160 | conversations.
00:01:57.620 | So that's what I'm aiming for.
00:01:59.360 | And it's important on the scale to remove perfectionism because even the C2 is still
00:02:04.960 | not perfect.
00:02:06.080 | It means that you can work functionally through the language the same way you would in your
00:02:10.640 | mother tongue.
00:02:11.640 | Now on the same scale, I think that at the A2 level, upper beginner, this is where you
00:02:18.600 | can function very confidently as an independent tourist in the language.
00:02:25.160 | So you can ask for directions, you can get the gist of their reply, you can deal with
00:02:32.320 | problems like you have an injury and you can get yourself to the hospital.
00:02:36.840 | All of these very basic functional things you can do with confidence, even though you
00:02:42.240 | can't necessarily have full on conversations.
00:02:45.640 | And I think that is fine for somebody who's going to the country briefly, and it is something
00:02:50.180 | you could genuinely get to in a lot shorter of a time than people realize.
00:02:54.680 | The very steep curve at the beginning, you can make a lot of progress very quickly.
00:02:59.800 | What tends to happen is we reach the intermediate plateau.
00:03:04.120 | This is where things start to get really rough, where you're putting as much effort in, but
00:03:08.280 | you get stuck at the middle level.
00:03:11.120 | And this will happen to everybody and that's okay as long as you can push through to very
00:03:16.440 | beginning stages that B1 I feel is something that is definitely achievable in the matter
00:03:21.980 | of a certain amount of months for people, regardless of your background, if you're able
00:03:26.960 | to put the time in.
00:03:27.960 | A B1 level means you can have a lot of conversations with people as long as they're a little patient
00:03:34.060 | with you.
00:03:35.060 | So it does not count as fluency, but it counts as conversational.
00:03:39.840 | And for me, this is where I love to be in my travels because I can start to make friends
00:03:45.440 | in the language.
00:03:46.520 | I can really hang out with people.
00:03:48.960 | If you're single, you can go on dates with people.
00:03:52.160 | You can do a lot with that B1 level.
00:03:54.940 | So this for me is a minimum to feel like I'm truly experiencing the culture in a lot more
00:04:01.540 | of a direct way.
00:04:03.300 | Anything less than that is more a case of how confident a tourist you're going to be,
00:04:07.840 | which in itself can be a wonderful thing.
00:04:11.080 | You can have a lot of great experiences, but ultimately you are going to be doing most
00:04:15.220 | of your things in English if you're only at an A2 level, which means your interactions,
00:04:21.400 | your friends and so on.
00:04:23.480 | So it depends on your style of travel.
00:04:25.260 | My style of travel obviously is I avoid English.
00:04:28.440 | I want to make only local friends.
00:04:30.640 | So I have to get at least a B1 level.
00:04:34.160 | And that's where, when you said at the beginning, Benny speaks 12 languages, that number 12
00:04:40.200 | comes from B1 and up.
00:04:42.800 | So I personally only say I speak a language if I can have conversations in the language,
00:04:50.360 | not if I would function as a tourist.
00:04:52.800 | So I actually have another dozen languages that I could function as a tourist quite confidently.
00:04:58.400 | But the thing is, that's not as impressive as it sounds because you could do that a lot
00:05:01.960 | quicker than people realize.
00:05:03.400 | You can be a very confident tourist.
00:05:05.000 | You can have a bunch of phrases ready to go in a very, very short time span.
00:05:09.820 | So you can be a confident tourist way faster than you imagine, especially if you're having
00:05:15.360 | consistent conversations ahead of time.
00:05:18.560 | I did for a while travel to the country and think I'm going to get off the plane and immediately
00:05:23.560 | start speaking the language or start learning the language.
00:05:26.720 | And that was an interesting period in my life.
00:05:29.560 | But nowadays I try to learn the language ahead of time.
00:05:33.020 | So I don't leave it for when I'm in the country.
00:05:35.200 | I don't think, especially for people who can only travel to a country for a very limited
00:05:40.560 | amount of time, I don't want to be in language learning mode if I'm only going to be in a
00:05:45.960 | country for a month or two, I want to really get to know the place.
00:05:49.840 | So that's why I do my work ahead of time and then I can explore and make friends once I