"Why do you learn this language? It's useless"

[Cavesa]

I really like this post, Iceberg! It shows what actually matters, when you learn a language for travelling.

Most people learning "for travelling" and most courses focused "on travelling" actually focus only on stuff you don't actually need much. You can point at stuff and have the price written on paper or look at the cash register (and trust me, people really try very hard to understand you, when they can get some money out of it). You can have the directions shown on a map, or you can just use navigation in your phone in most places (hey, we got around in Japan, even outside the main tourist zones, by redrawing kanjis of the train stations on paper). you can google stuff in a menu.

That's why I dislike how much do beginner coursebooks these days focus on this and not that much on general basics of the language. That's why people logically underestimate the value of learning a language for travelling, because they expect just this.. Plus they underestimate the simple fact that you can say a lot with a few phrases and word substitution, but the natives are likely to speak differently. But a real base of the language, including grammar, gets you much further. A huge part of the prejudice that it is useless to learn the basics of a local language comes from collectively spread experience of the people, who were surprised their few parroted phrases weren't such a miracle.

Perhaps I get more than a fair share of weird stuff happening to me (my boyfriend and friends say so), but speaking a foreign language at an intermediate level is much more practical than relying on someone else's (often bad) English in the real situations that matter and which you are not unlikely to encounter, if only you spend enough time travelling (and doesn't matter whether you hoard that amount of time weekend by weekend or in one long stay):

-hospitals and healthcare in general. Yeah, everybody learns "medical English". Trust me, most people still suck at it all over Europe. I can compare. Good luck, when you are feeling really bad and need to communicate stuff efficiently and quickly

-the police. yes, things get stolen sometimes, accidents happen, and so on. again, good luck on being efficient just in English (and the police officer's English), so that you don't spend two and half eternity at the police station

-a technical problem at your hotel or with an airbnb. of course they'll understand you want to pay. But they may not understand your heating doesn't work, you didn't get enough towels, or that your neighbours are making your stay a torture.

and so on, and so on.

Similarly, I don't get the "I want to be conversational", what the hell? People mean like the conversation "One coffee, please". That is another common idea, which makes people underestimate our hobby. Many simply have no clue how good you CAN actually get, and judge whole language learning just by their own sad experience, or that of their friends and acquitances.