Rick Steves Warns About This Language Pitfall When Traveling In Europe

When students start to learn English, they usually learn, "Hello! How are you?" They don't learn, "Howdy! What's the news, boss?" Or: "Sup, brah? All good in your world?" Or even: "Now there's a sight for sore eyes! Tell me everything!" All these phrases mean approximately the same thing, and if you're fluent in American English, you shouldn't have any trouble understanding what is being said, even if the word choice feels a little odd. But if English is your second language, these phrases may not make any sense.

Travel maven Rick Steves wrote a blog post about this on his website titled "Leaping Over Europe's Language Barriers," in which he implores tourists to "can the slang." When fluent English speakers communicate with each other, we may use a rainbow of colorful expressions ("pedal to the metal"), dramatic idioms ("crushing it"), established metaphors ("bottom of the ninth"), and intelligible nonsense ("Boom Shaka Laka!") The language gets even richer when Americans visit other English-speaking countries and encounter a whole new set of phrases: "Fair dinkum," "Hang a Roger," "Bob's your uncle," etc.

Many consider English the international language, and students from Paris to Beijing feel obligated to study it, but let's be reasonable: The full lexicon has over one million words, many of which are spelled strangely ("colonel"), hard to pronounce ("sixth"), and take unpredictable forms ("go," "went," "has gone"). Steves was speaking specifically about travel in Europe — his area of expertise — but this advice is valuable anywhere: Use language that you believe the other person will understand.

To be frank, most Americans aren't well acquainted with this mentality. The American Academy of Arts & Sciences estimates that 80 percent of U.S. adults speak only English; if they took, say, a Spanish class in high school, they remember little more than greetings and "¿Dónde está el baño?" If you haven't meaningfully studied a second or third language, you may not appreciate how much effort is required to keep up. There is an ugly stereotype of Americans simply speaking louder, as if sheer volume will make them coherent. As multilingual apps like Google Translate become ever more sophisticated, Americans may shy further away from foreign grammar.

This contrasts sharply with Europeans, among whom 65 percent of adults are conversant in at least two languages, leading to a better understanding of how language acquisition works. Now, this statistic varies a lot, and not everyone empathizes with non-native speakers; in many travel anecdotes, Americans attempt to speak remedial French with Parisians, who ignore or scoff at them. Generally speaking, Europeans are more cognizant of linguistic differences; after all, 24 official languages are spoken across the continent, plus 200 minor tongues.

So, when someone attempts to speak English with you, it's wise to speak slowly and clearly and avoid complex slang until you've gauged the person's skills. Many of us do this instinctively, but it's easy to derail the conversation with obscure words and references. Now, what happens when the tables turn, and no one around you speaks English at all? Here is Rick Steves' advice for traveling to a destination where you don't speak the language.