International Travel as a Single Lingual

Can you enjoy international travel if you only speak one language?

As an American, I’m regularly chided for speaking only one language fluently; however, less than half of the world’s population is bilingual, so I’m actually in the majority when it comes to my language skills.

I speak a fair amount of German (from high school), and I’ve got a pretty good grasp of Spanish, but I’d never consider myself fluent in either language (I am working on Spanish pretty diligently though).

Monolingualism is often seen as uncultured and lazy, but it’s tough to overcome being a single lingual unless you grow up in a house where your parents or grandparents regularly speak to you in a different language or you attend a dual immersion school where you learn two languages.

Some countries encourage bilingualism, but it’s certainly not a problem faced solely by Americans. If you’ve translated this blog post with Google or some other program, perhaps you’re a single lingual, too, and you only know the language with which you grew up.

Not to worry, however. You can definitely embark on an international vacation to countries that speak wildly different languages from yours, even if you don’t even know how to say “hello” in that country’s language.

(note: some of the links here are to websites with which I am an affiliate, and your purchases help fund my website!)

Getting Around With Zero Local Language Knowledge

In some cases, traveling to another country where the population speaks a different language is made easier because the language is mildly familiar to you.

When I traveled to Colombia, I usually got the gist of what people were saying, even if I didn’t have 100 percent comprehension. Colombian Spanish is definitely different from Mexican Spanish (Americans in Southern California, where I live, often learn a Mexican or Central American dialect of Spanish, or maybe Castilian Spanish if you learn it in a formal school setting).

Nobody in Colombia was annoyed, though, that I couldn’t understand them. I’d push my way through some basic sentences in whatever place I was visiting (like a restaurant or a hotel), and if the person wasn’t fluent in English, they usually knew enough for basic communication.

It wasn’t difficult either to find tours with English-speaking guides. When we went on a La Candelaria tour in Bogotá, our guide spoke English, as well as Spanish to communicate with all the locals. Interestingly, on one of our tours in Colombia, our guide was actually from Venezuela and was so adept at different dialects of Spanish that he used different accents when speaking with various Spanish-speaking people.

If you don’t speak the local language, or you’re just not that fluent in it, walking around with a guide that speaks your language is super-duper helpful. I’ve booked walking tours in absolutely every country I’ve visited except for Iceland where I still booked activities with English-speaking providers, like snowmobiling on the Langjökull Glacier (this is the actual tour I took – SO COOL!).

When I visited Vietnam, a significant portion of the population didn’t speak any English at all, but again, I never felt that I was annoying anyone with my choppy words or the halting sentences I tried to use.

We went on a bicycle ride near Hội An and much of the ride occurred in very rural areas. We had “Vietnamese pancakes” there, which were some of the most delicious things I’ve ever eaten.

Here is one of those pancakes (this is the actual pancake; I took this picture of my hand holding the plate!):

The woman who cooked this plate for me didn’t speak a whiff of English, but we both knew how to smile and nod and interact without any actual words.

In some interactions, I even used my phone to translate a few words when I wasn’t sure what to say. However, you don’t absolutely need to invest in a translator or have Google at your fingertips to communicate. Hand gestures, pointing, and knowing just a few words are all fine.

When You Travel, You Interact With People Who Expect Tourists

One of the most important things to remember is that a lot of the people you’ll interact with during your travels are already used to tourists who don’t speak the language and usually know a few words in multiple languages.

For example, Vietnam frequently welcomes tourists from China, but only a small segment of the Vietnamese population speaks Chinese. This doesn’t stop loads of Chinese tourists from visiting and enjoying what the country has to offer. The same goes for Indian tourists to Vietnam, which is a popular destination for vacationing Indians. Indian-speaking Vietnamese people aren’t exactly common, but they do welcome those tourists despite the language barrier.

Now, you can definitely head off the beaten path and interact with locals who rarely see foreigners, but for most travelers, everybody you meet is going to expect some interaction with non-locals.

Don’t Restrict Your Travel Because of Language Barriers

The first major international destination I traveled to a few years ago was Iceland, where virtually everyone speaks my language. Some of the locals don’t even speak Icelandic anymore (some of the younger generation isn’t actually fluent in Icelandic). Although I knew that most of the population spoke English before the trip, I did have a bit of trepidation before arriving, but my fears were totally unfounded.

One thing to consider, too, is that many of the guided tours you might book when you visit another country will offer a variety of language options. One of the Cambodian tours I set up had the option for German, French, English, or Spanish for the tour guide, and the tour guides were virtually all locals whose second language was one of those options.

I think it’s normal to wonder whether you’ll have any language problems when you visit a country, but from my travels so far, those barriers haven’t stopped me from interacting with locals in different countries or feeling safe and comfortable while traveling. Before I traveled to Vietnam, I was a little bit more nervous than the Iceland trip, but even with much of the population knowing just a handful of English words, I still managed to have an amazing time.

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