Foreign Language Apathy

I was lucky enough to end my trip in the same location I began it, in beautiful Finland. This nice bit of symmetry occurred thanks to me choosing to start my trip by visiting my good friend Jannica, who then informed me she was engaged, and getting married 16 months later; an event she insisted I would have to make. Thanks to my money stretching much further than I thought possible, and my parents’ ability to extend me a line of credit, I was able to finish my trip off in a suit and tie, drinking champagne, and dancing the night away with a group of crazy drunken Finns.

By finishing off my trip in the same place I started, it gave me an interesting insight into just how much I’d changed and developed as a traveller over the past 16 months. I was quite pleasantly surprised to find that Finland was exactly as beautiful as I had first found it, and that the novelty of drinking giant beers with bears on their label will never wear off.

The only bear made for bears.

In fact, for the most part, I really hadn't changed that much, with one glaring exception. When I first came to Finland, I made an earnest attempt to learn as much Finnish as possible, and while my vocab didn't expand much past ‘Hello’, ‘Thank you’, and ‘I would very much like to see you naked?’, I repeated the little Finnish I did know with great enthusiasm and frequency (especially that last sentence). However, my second trip resulted in me watching as my Aussie friend and travel buddy, Gavin, made similar attempts to learn the local dialect, while I banked on being able to get by with English, and allowed every new word to pass in one ear and out the other.

Sadly the one thing that I had tired of, and essentially given up on, was the learning of unnecessary new words. I’m not saying that like some hillbilly slurring ‘E’rybody orta speak Inglish coz that’s what tha Lawd spokeded’, but in the sense that when you’re changing countries as frequently as once per week, there is no chance you’ll pick up enough of the local dialect to be able to converse meaningfully, so with the exception of learning absolutely essential or basic phrases, you will find yourself very quickly hoping the locals speak some English, and if that fails resorting to mime.

This doesn't happen immediately though. In fact it is a gradual process, as I present to you in my rigorously researched:

THE RANTING PIKEY’S GUIDE TO FOREIGN LANGUAGE APATHY:

1^stCountry: You ask for the translation for every word you can think of and every object you come across. Hello, Thank you, and swear words are quickly mastered, unless you’re drunk, in which case you regularly mistake the word for having sex with someone’s mother for thank you. Any sentence longer than two words is forgotten before you’ve finished saying it the first time.

Example: ‘What’s the word for hello? What’s the word for thanks? I have a good accent? Oh shucks. I’m a language natural! I’m going to learn all the languages! Wait, what was hello again?’
 

2^ndCountry: You’re still as keen as ever to learn the local language, and you seem to be finally developing an ear for understanding foreign tongues. As a bonus, this new language is almost the same as the first country’s, and you can double up on some words.

Example: ‘Schlagastool? Wow, that’s exactly how they say it in Examplestan!’

3^rdCountry: It’s now starting to get pretty confusing. You begin to forget which word is from which country, and you begin saying Hello in country number 1’s language, Goodbye in country 2’s, and swearing in some made up language which sounds a little like German.

Example: ‘Ola, parlez vous Englais? Nein? Fleekenburger!’

4^th-15^thCountry: You begin to realise that no matter where you are, you are never further than ten metres from someone who speaks English. Thanks to it being the language of Coca Cola, Michael Jordan, and iPads, English is now spoken at least a little by about 99% of the world. Even the 1% who don’t speak English tend to be very friendly and through various means you begin to realise that the spoken word is just one of many ways of communicating with fellow human beings.

You will also learn that speaking a little bit of a language can get you in more trouble than you’d think. Mostly this just involves locals thinking you’re fluent, before breaking into some extravagant conversation with you, but occasionally it can involve border guards in Israel extensively grilling you about why have an Australian passport but are speaking Hebrew.

Example:
‘Bonjour, como sa va?’
‘Ahhhh. Blah blah blah sacre bleu blah blah blah baguette blah blah blah……..
     ……..blah blah blah Cedric Pioline blah blah’
‘Errr, pardon, me no hablo French’

Somewhere around 20^th country:

‘Do you speak English?’
‘Que?’
‘DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH!!!!???’
‘No’
‘WHERE IS THE TRAIN STATION???’

Of course this isn’t the same for all travellers. Obviously if your first language isn’t English, you’ll have a vastly different experience. Here is how I’ve observed foreign languages are approached by different nationalities:

Swiss backpackers:
1^st Country: Speak language fluently upon arrival, and expand vocab.
2^nd Country: Speak language fluently upon arrival, and expand vocab.
Rest  of trip: Speak language fluently upon arrival, and expand vocab.

American tourists:
All countries: ‘I’M FROM AMERICA, DO YOU SPEAK AMERICAN?’

Australian Bogans:
Say ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’ in the local tongue, then congratulate themselves for learning the entire language and now believes that so long as they precede English words with the local version of hello, the confused locals with magically be able to understand everything they’ve said.

Ironically they will also walk around uttering things like: ‘I farkin love that you can say whatever you loik about these stupid people and they don’t even know what you’re saying’, as the locals load up their meals with a double dosage of E.coli.

Italian backpackers: 

Learn a very basic amount of the local language and still add their own Italian dialect to it. No one cares, as whoever is talking to them is lost in their eyes and the song of the poetry coming from their mouth.

German backpackers: 

Learn quite a large amount of the local language and dialect wherever they go, including being better at speaking English than most native English speakers. Everyone hates them anyway.

English backpackers: 

Professional foreign swear word memorisers, especially if it’s a racial slur which can be used in a football chant.