Peace! A few weeks ago I offered in a comment to post what I do when I am preparing to learn a new language for travel. U/rhodopensis asked if I could make such a post and here it is:
I was a Language and Social Studies secondary school teacher for most of my career. I taught Spanish, French, English, and Arabic as a foreign language. I have also learned a good amount of German and Romanian, and lesser amounts of other languages. So now my husband and I are planning to go to a part of the world that we’ve never been to before: 4-6 weeks in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia.
The first thing I do is research which languages are useful in that area. Apparently, many people speak English, but I would like to have at least a very basic understanding, to be friendly, get around, and maybe shop in a market. With a language that is not related to one that I already know, I can’t expect to learn much in four months.
I discovered that the Indonesian-Malay languages are basically dialects of one language. It’s written in Latin letters and sometimes Arabic script, and has a lot of vocabulary borrowing from Arabic, so that should help me. I’m not planning on learning Tamil or any sort of Chinese, which don’t use a writing system with which I am familiar and also Chinese is tonal. I am too old to be playing with all that!
So I have the yearly Pimsleur Unlimited, and Indonesian is one of the languages included, so I started with that. All that’s available is thirty lessons, which should be enough for the basics. After completing those lessons, I will hire a teacher through Italki, which I have done with several languages. I expect to only book once per week.
I also bought the Lonely Planet Malay phrase book. I have used Lonely Planet many times over these decades and trust their advice. I went directly to their site, which offered a 20% discount and also free shipping.
This phrase book will be able to travel in a pocket and offers support in the ways that Indonesian and Malaysian differ.
I don’t intend to remember Indonesian/Malay after this trip unless my husband somehow falls in love with it and wants to go back for an artistic residency or something. So 15 hours of Pimsleur, 12 hours of instruction, and probably 1/2 hour per day of the actual trip is all I plan to prepare. If it was a language that I planned to remember and add to my life, I would get text books and the lessons would be three times per week, plus I would hire in-person tutors in the country.
Finally, I prepare a small photo album with images of our family and our home, city, etc, to show to people if we are nearby on a bus or ferry or something. I don’t put anything too expensive in the photos but just the basics so folx can get an idea.
If there are other questions please ask! Peace.
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