Travel Pants: Language Learning on a Shoestring

I spent about eight years learning Spanish, including several stints in different Spanish-speaking countries. Upon landing in Uruguay for my year abroad (and after two years of college Spanish), I could read Kafka-esque novels by Latin American authors and dissect them in essays written in Spanish, but my conversational fluency was severely lacking. School trained me to learn the language formally — to read, write, and recite with perfect grammar.

Faced with dichotomous contrast, I decided: to hell with books, I'm going to watch more TV, listen to the radio, read the paper, talk to the cab driver, waiter, salesperson, etc., and go out as much as possible to meet and chat with new people. Sort of like this guy, doing language learning in his pajamas.

The worst mistake I made was to focus too much on my grammar, hesitating in conversation for fear of saying something wrong. I got there eventually, and people were often impressed with my killer vocabulary (acquired from hours of poring over novels with my sidekick dictionary). Sure, formal language training helped me, but the boot camp approach of language immersion is what really works.

When I arrived in Uruguay on day one, I could converse, but about 8 or 9 months after my epiphany, I could form complex conditionals in speech. It might have clicked for me a bit earlier in the year, had I forgone the books in favor of full conversational practice, but I reached my goal all the same: At the end of the year, I was fluent.

Last summer, I took a beginner's Portuguese class. It was $160 for 20 hours of small class instruction and no English was allowed. The grammar is so similar to Spanish that I only needed to learn vocabulary and pronunciation, however; after watching subtitled episodes of City of Men, a drama about the favelas of Rio De Janeiro, I realized I could have done the same through a variety of online tools that exist today.

To avoid my complicated, if not expensive, road to learning new languages, follow this guide.

THE BASICS: LOW-COST ONLINE TOOLS

WorldNomads offers a number of language podcasts and apps for the iPod touch and iPhone that include integrated phrasebooks. These are great for learning on the go. You can use the plane ride to practice. A number of companies produce language podcasts, though the popular brands vary depending on the language. The comprehensive "big list" on Freelanguage.org is an updated guide to online language learning applications, podcasts, and resources, including the U.S. Foreign Service Institute's audio lessons.

The BBC also keeps a fairly dynamic section of its website dedicated to language learning resources. This includes a free beginner languge course by email (12 weeks of tips in Italian, French, German, or Spanish), and an award-winning interactive Spanish video series, Mi Vida Loca, through which you can learn practical Spanish in 22 episodes, free language crosswords, and free online language level testing. The BBC's site also seems to target travelers, as evidenced by a phrase guide for the La Tomatina Festival in Spain.

COMPREHENSION:
Follow Foreign News, Blogs, and Radio Stations and Watch Films with Subtitles

To recreate the immersion experience, surround yourself with your new language of choice any chance you get. Read children's stories when you first start out, or Harry Potter translations once you're further along. Try to learn new vocabulary from pop songs, and later read the news in your new language. There's no right way to learn a language, so do whatever interests you most and you'll be more apt to stick with it. The idea is to expose yourself to as much vocabulary and real speech as possible. Memorizing phrases from a textbook only helps your grammar, not your ability to read, comprehend, or speak the language.

Benny Lewis, a self-described polyglot and septet-linguist who keeps a blog called Fluent in Three Months lives by his own mantra that learners need to "do a Google blog search in your target language for topics that interest you and subscribe. These have nothing to do with the language itself. I follow blogs in Spanish about website design and sites in French about the news, etc."

Watching TV and online videos is a great complement to conversation "class," because it's a rapid-fire way to build a strong vocabulary. Track down foreign TV series and watch them with subtitles or closed captioning in the same language for added comprehension. Rent DVDs from Netflix or your local library in the more widely spoken languages, such as Spanish, French, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Hindi, and Russian.

Yabla.com takes this method of audiovisual language acquisition one step further by integrating a dictionary and flashcards for repetition. Additional grammar lessons are also offered and draw directly from videos hosted on the site.

John DuQuette, Yabla's CEO, supports the powerful potential for language acquisition through subtitles with a well-regarded linguistic theory. "It turns out that there is plenty of 'pedagogical' evidence that backs up the use of captions as means of accelerating acquisition," or "multi-modal input. Acquisition is about gaining the language in such a way, through exposure, that you just 'know it' but you don't necessarily know 'the rules.' The less you worry about 'learning' the faster you will acquire [the language]...Most language education as taught in schools treats authentic content as a 'supplement' (at best) — it's grammar lessons that should be the supplement!"

CONVERSATION:
Class, Social Networking, Tandem Learning and Couchsurfing

There are a few ways to dive right in at low or no cost. Number one is find a conversation partner (real or virtual), be it through a friend, a tandem language learning exchange like: VoxSwap.com or MyHappyPlanet.com (where you're paired up with a native speaker who wants to improve their English via Skype or other virtual tools); a Meetup group in cities nationwide; or by being adventurous and hosting travelers through CouchSurfing.org.

VoxSwap co-founder Sean Hargrave launched his language social networking site as a way put his rusty German skills to use. "It struck me that everyone online is communicating with friends they already know instead of expanding their horizons by speaking to people from other cultures," he said. "Hence it would be a good idea to have a social network with a purpose." Through VoxSwap, members dedicated to learning a new language can join chats and make friends who help them practice.

"I think web 2.0 is so amazing," added Hargrave. "If you think back, when you learned a language at school there was never a native speaker around — just a textbook and a friend next to you who didn't know how the words are pronounced. Now you can click a button and get speaking to people in the language you're learning. It's such a fundamental difference."

Rosetta Stone's SharedTalk network also connects learners over voice and text chat. There's a forum or site somewhere hosted by a variety of language brands, large and small, for almost every language out there. And a variety of additional ways to practice speaking can be found in ReadWriteWeb's article on the same topic: 20 Ways to Learn a Language.

Meetup.com hosts a number of groups dedicated to getting together in person to speak a language in cities all across the country. The fee for group events, such as a Spanish dinner, or bar conversation night, is usually very low, in the range of $5 to $10.

Finding a "tandem" language learning partner in person can be a bit more tricky, but many universities offer this service to their students and often, the greater community.

Hosting travelers in your home is another great way to gain exposure to the languages you're learning. CouchSurfing is an international traveler's network whose members hail from countries across the globe and speak many different languages. By listing the languages that you speak (from beginner to fluent), you'll already be self-selecting the kinds of "surfers" who contact you in need of a couch to crash on during their travels.

"As a host, your guest can help you at any level you may be, and they will be motivated and enthusiastic, since you are doing them a favour by saving them money on hostels. It's a win-win for everyone and completely free," adds Benny Lewis of Fluent in Three Months, who mentioned that CouchSurfing.org is his number one resource for low-cost language learning.

Occasionally you'll slip and make a sexual innuendo, saying the word for homosexual rather than boardwalk (Spanish) or saying that you're pregnant. It's part of the learning curve and is fodder for a lot of laughter.

Learning slang, phrases, and the words for everyday items, is often a backpacker's first step. And maybe it's the right one. As wanderers traversing multiple physical and linguistic borders know, learning these key parts of language are essential -- to be able to ask where the bathroom is (everyday), tell people where you're from (first phrase), and to make friends (slang).

Lewis believes that "the academic approach is a major mistake; a language is a natural thing and its purpose is communication. We should learn it naturally; infants, for example, don't hear much about future subjunctives and word order. They are just encouraged to talk as much as possible."

Copyright 2009 Shoestring, LLC.