Talk:Learning languages abroad

VFD discussion
Language tourism & Spanish language tourism

Both have previously been deleted at least once already. Delete again? Or keep as Travel activities? ~ 203.144.143.4 16:05, 17 December 2007 (EST)


 * Delete . I think I was the one to delete these earlier as non-articles. They are plausibly travel topics, but currently lack any useful information, just fluff. And I'm not convinced there is anything useful to be said on this matter, speaking as someone who does travel for the purpose of language acquisition. If you want to learn language X, go spend time in country X. Any practical information beyond that becomes a guide to "how to learn languages," which seems beyond the scope of Wikivoyage to me. While language certainly is a reason to travel, I don't see a practical purpose for a travel topic about this motivation. --(WT-en) Peter Talk 20:55, 17 December 2007 (EST)
 * Keep. They are valid travel topics. We should keep them, as we do with many stub articles, and see if they develop. An article on the other side of language travel, Teaching English, was once vfd'd and is now a guide, almost star. (WT-en) Pashley 21:26, 17 December 2007 (EST)
 * There's lots they could cover: If I want to learn Spanish, what are the differences in cost, accent, etc. between Spain, Argentina, etc.? Which schools are good? In interesting cities? On good beaches? Which have courses specifically for business Spanish? (WT-en) Pashley 21:35, 17 December 2007 (EST)
 * Fair enough, I might have been being shortsighted. I think the generic Language tourism should be delimited, though, to a basic index of specific language tourism articles (which right now only includes the stub Spanish one). I suppose I could cobble together a decent article of this nature for Russian.
 * Only one other point, though&mdash;I don't like the name "Language Tourism," as it seems neo-logismy to me. Wouldn't Learning Spanish abroad be better? --(WT-en) Peter Talk 22:05, 17 December 2007 (EST)
 * I like Learning Spanish abroad much better as well. Tourism is one reason to travel, language learning is another. (WT-en) Texugo 23:09, 17 December 2007 (EST)


 * Surely a single-item "Language tourism" index should be a sub-section of the relevent "Travel topics" index, at least until it grows too long to fit there.
 * How about redirecting Language tourism to a "Learning languages abroad" section on the Travel activities page? ~ 203.144.143.4 01:10, 18 December 2007 (EST)
 * Sounds good to me. --(WT-en) Peter Talk 01:30, 18 December 2007 (EST)
 * Me too.(WT-en) Texugo 01:56, 18 December 2007 (EST)
 * Me three.(WT-en) Pashley 02:27, 18 December 2007 (EST)
 * Done. ~ 58.8.2.192 15:32, 18 December 2007 (EST)

Activity or reason? Redirect to outline
I think the present redirect to Activities#Learning languages abroad is less than ideal. We now have Reasons to travel with Studying abroad, which make much better company than Agritourism and Photography, between which the section now is placed.

I think the topic is worth an article, and I saw no good place for the paragraph in activities, so I wrote an outline and moved it (together with this talk page) to the suggested title, Learning languages abroad, and changed the breadcrumb to Reasons to travel. There is much to add, but I won't be working on the article in the near future. Do what you might.

–LPfi (talk) 16:58, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

"grammar is not easier to get abroad"
I disagree. If you're speaking another language all day because you have to, your grammar is likely to be corrected, and you can also ask locals how to say x or y. I'll give you an example. I was having a conversation with a woman on a train in Italy and I wanted to say something had been worthwhile. I knew that the phrase "vale la pena" meant "is worthwhile", so I said "ha valuta la pena", and my conversation partner corrected me, saying that I needed to use "e valsa le pena". When you aren't speaking a language, grammar has a theoretical sense to it; when you are, you get practical lessons in it. On the other hand, of course many people dispense with a lot of aspects of formal grammar in daily speech. For example, when I lived in rural Malaysia, lots of niceties that were supposed to be used in standard Malay were dispensed with or abbreviated, and in France, "Je ne sais pas" isn't used much in spoken French, but "Je sais pas" is common. But I don't think that really weakens my point, which is that when you are immersed in a language, you learn grammar the way it is used in daily life. If you want to learn formal grammar for the purpose of reading and writing, you should take formal classes in it, but I still think that learning how to speak a language will help you understand the way speakers of that language think, as expressed in the grammar and usage in the language, and that will help you internalize the grammar. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:41, 15 November 2020 (UTC)


 * I agree with you—using the language authentically helps you internalize and improve your grammar. But I think the paragraph in question does have a point: you can get more mileage out of learning abroad if you already have a decent foundation. Maybe we can rephrase it to make that point without implying that learning abroad doesn't help with grammar. —Granger (talk · contribs) 19:59, 15 November 2020 (UTC)


 * I don't agree with that, either. Just throwing yourself into things is good, and the "foundation" can just be very basic stuff you can listen to on YouTube or a phrasebook. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:42, 15 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Maybe it depends on the learner or the situation. I've certainly seen expats in China try to learn Chinese purely by throwing themselves into it and fail to get past the basics. And a learner's time for travel is usually limited—if I only have, say, a month to spend in the country, I do think I get more mileage out of that month if I learn the basics first so I have something to build on when I arrive. But I can believe this isn't universal. —Granger (talk · contribs) 16:42, 16 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Sure, the basics you can get by doing a couple of, like, Pimsleur segments. My first trip to China was in the summer of 1987. I studied for a few weeks by using a basic phrasebook and the cassette (remember those?) that accompanied it, and that plus a dictionary and listening to people during a 3-week segment (that is, not counting the additional ~2 weeks I was in Hong Kong) were sufficient for me to have a survival level of Mandarin sufficient for me to purchase my own train ticket in Wuxi Train Station for Beijing. I was able to request a noontime hard seat and read the basic information on the ticket, which my Lonely Planet guidebook showed me how to read. I was also able to check into hotels and order food in restaurants, again at a survival level. I had a very similar experience in Hungary in 1994. I had a phrasebook with a 2-sided cassette, a book on Hungarian grammar and a dictionary. Some days, I understood basic conversation and made myself understood well; other days, I didn't understand people well at all and then couldn't make head or tails of my accent or whatever, but the bottom line is that I was able to get around. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:03, 16 November 2020 (UTC)


 * I think it probably also depends on how similar the grammar of the language in question is to the languages you already speak. For instance, Japanese has a very different syntax from English or Chinese, so I'm not sure I would have been able to just pick up Japanese by living in Japan without any formal lessons. I had to spend months learning all the proper conjugations for Japanese verbs and adjectives before I could string coherent sentences together. But what is certainly true is that what they teach you in class is very formal Japanese that you will hear in news broadcasts and public service announcements, and not how people actually talk to each other in the street. So I still needed to practise with some native speakers, and to watch Japanese dramas, before I was competent enough to understand the Japanese spoken in the streets.


 * On the other hand, because Cantonese has a similar syntax to Mandarin, and because of how simple Chinese grammar is, I was able to pick up quite a fair bit of Cantonese by simply watching Hong Kong dramas without any formal lessons. The dog2 (talk) 17:34, 16 November 2020 (UTC)


 * That's a good point (not just similarities in grammar, but in vocabulary too). I had more success picking up Portuguese in Brazil than Thai in Thailand, and I think that's partly because I could already speak Spanish. —Granger (talk · contribs) 18:56, 16 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Hungarian grammar is very complex and dissimilar in important ways from that of any other language I have any familiarity with, but I was just beginning to understand it more at the end of my 2-week visit to Budapest. I do have to admit that I'm a lot better at picking up and understanding languages than many other people, though. One important structural element of Mandarin grammar that I didn't pick up until my 2nd trip to China is that if you want to ask how to say a word, you need to put "shenme shuo" at the end of the sentence. During my first trip, I put it at the beginning of the sentence and no-one understood my questions. The fact that I studied 3 Pimsleur CDs instead of a shorter and even more basic cassette tape the 2nd time helped, but I also found that when I backslid to putting "shenme shuo" at the beginning of the sentence, no-one understood but that when I put it at the end, everyone understood. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:07, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I disagree: To get is an (informal) synonym for to understand. As far as I understand the argument is that you have a certain “brain capacity” and you need, say, an hour to understand a certain principle. This can be done completely independently from your location. Note, the criticized statement appears in the section Prepare. I think it’s absolutely warranted to give everyone a heads-up “language travel is an aid, but cannot significantly reduce time and effort.” Also, when we’re talking about grammar we need to stress there are multiple/many grammars (plural). Textbook grammars are usually conservative, but I really recommend everyone to get a firm understanding of these before heading abroad. Otherwise you risk getting confused, you might even think “I am wrong.” Kai Burghardt (talk) 11:11, 23 September 2022 (UTC)