I can't remember if I've mentioned it before, but I have a longer trip coming up quite soonish now, a joint venture to Peru. It's somewhere I have always been fascinated by, so seizing the invitation wasn't a difficult decision.
One thing I wanted to do beforehand was to acquire a little acquaintance with the Spanish language, as besides being convinced that it's polite to make the effort to speak to the locals in their own language, I also feel slightly helpless when I have to be totally reliant on others for communication. So I bit the bullet as January started, and took out a three-month subscription to the online version of a language course. The online option is a fraction of the price of the packaged version, and they send a free headset to go with it. The only snag was that I had to wait until last Monday to get going, because the headset came from Germany.
Parenthetically: among the brethren, it's best to be a native English-speaker. Otherwise you will be obliged to learn English anyway, and nobody will make much effort to learn yours unless they're moving to your country. Although standardising does make brethren life much easier, I suppose, I think that's kind of sad. I've taken advantage of many people's efforts to learn my language in the past, and it always feels very one-sided, which I don't like. I am fairly resolved that this time will be different.
I now realise I was being just a little arrogant, thinking that I could just absorb another language "on the side", without too much effort or any change in routine. I vaguely sort of thought that it could be teaching me while I was doing chores like ironing.
But it's actually very difficult.
I must say, although I hadn't banked on another commitment of this size, it's very refreshing to have a serious challenge that isn't as important as it is serious. Obviously I have quite a number of challenges crowding at me, and have done for months, but they are the kind of things that become challenges because of the stakes, not because of their inherent difficulty. Work, for example. This Spanish is different - if I fail, I will have wasted time, money and effort, but my life will be about as much on track as it was before. Other problems, if not solved correctly, could change my life for years ahead.
So it looks as though I will be spending an hour a day clicking pictures on a screen and attempting to make the machine understand my atrocious accent. The course progresses scarily fast, so in a couple of months I should either be pretty good, or completely burnt out.
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The crash course is not a bad idea, but if I were you, I'd find one of those 'common phrases' books and take it along. If worse comes to worst, you can show the book to a native so they can see the words you are trying to pronounce.
My experience from several years living in the Orient is that even a little knowledge of the language helps. I can parse phrases in several languages at least to the point of recognizing sentence endings.
In my experience, it is best to express emotions in your native tongue, at least until you are quite comfortable in the new language. For example, I was invited to a home shortly after arriving in Taiwan and it appeared that they gave a feast in my honor. I was literally overwhelmed and the words for 'thank you' in Chinese seemed woefully inadequate. My host and hostess, however, seemed to get the message when I thanked them in English.
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