Okeymadokely. Gonna have to understand and make myself understood, and the only languages I speak – English, conversational French and passable German – are no bloody use whatsoever. Well, that’s not true; I have to work on the assumption that English will suffice in most places, otherwise I’m entirely screwed. But as my current experience in Brazil has taught me, being in a country where you don’t speak a word of the language is a very different experience to more recent excursions to, for example, Burgundy, New Orleans and Vienna.
So, need a phrasebook and a language list. The latter should be straight forward enough:
- Spanish
- Italian
- Greek
- Turkish
- Hebrew
- Arabic
- [French]
That’s six new languages, including two entirely new alphabets. So probably can’t aim to commit to memory that many words and phrases in each.
From previous experience in Tunisia I’m hoping that my French will suffice across North Africa, but some Arabic will be necessary for Jordan, Lebanon and the Territories. I’m not expecting to learn how to read Arabic or Hebrew, but to learn a few key words and phrases phonetically. Romance languages will be easier, God only knows what difficulty Greek and Turkish will represent. Looks like this might be a good starting point: http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/other/turkish/guide/phrases.shtml
So here’s a skeleton for my phonetic phrasebooks, which will follow in other posts:
- Hello
- Goodbye
- Please
- Thank you
- Yes
- No
- Good
- Bad
- Excuse me
- I’m sorry
- I don’t understand
- I don’t speak [name of language]
- Do you speak English?
- Pleased to meet you
- Where is [this]?
- How much is [this]?
- I would like…
- Help
- Hospital
- Police
- Plane / airport
- Train / train station
- Bus / bus station
- Ticket
- Hostel
- Minute
- Hour
- Days of the week
- Toilet
- Water
- And then some food-related words, because the biggest pot luck here in Brazil has been trying to order from a Portuguese-only menu. I’m eating a lot of frango [chicken], but how it’s cooked or what it comes with is anyone’s guess. I sat down for what I thought would be a classic Brazilian-style rice/beans/mandioca with some chicken… what arrived was deep fried breaded chicken breast with fries. Humpf. But at least I knew what frango was. So even if I can’t read a menu in Hebrew, I can at least order something from a waiter. So let’s choose ten words: fruit, bread, ham, cheese, beer, meat, chicken, fish, salad, wine. That’ll keep me going.
- Numbers (1-100 preferably, but certainly 1-10 and then 20 30 40 etc)
So all in all that’s about fifty words, plus about thirty numbers, once you’ve allowed for repetition. (Please let there be repetition… there’s gotta be, right? Our whole number system was founded in Arabic wasn’t it? “Thirty-seven” in Greek or Turkish or Hebrew surely has to be made of the words for “thirty” and “seven”??? … Fingers crossed.) So eighty words or short phrases, in six languages. 480 little quanta of information to absorb.
Easy peasy.
Eeeeek.
Spanish and Italian are the first I’ll need and the ones I’ll find easiest, so I’ll try to get Spanish out the way by the time I’ve come back from Brazil – perverse, but there are a lot of Spanish speakers here who might be able to help – and then it’s a language a week basically. To know these eighty words and phrases would have made me a lot more comfortable here in Brazil than the mere half-dozen I bothered to commit to memory on the plane over here, and less dependent on the kindness of strangers. Better to be self-sufficient in case of necessity. And it’s a fun party trick. Oh, on the subject of which, an eighty-first word to add to the list: cheers!
JoeliusCaesar 