HOW TO PICK UP THE LOCAL LANGUAGE BEFORE YOU GO

There are plenty of reasons to learn a foreign language before you travel. Perhaps you're venturing beyond major tourist centres, or you want to be prepared for emergencies. Whatever the reason, speaking even a few words of the local language with residents can quickly elevate you from mere tourist to sympathetic traveller.

- RUFFIN PREVOST

"This tiny interaction instantly connects you," said Mary Green, vice president and executive editor of Pimsleur Language Programs, in an email. "That's the feeling travellers are chasing. You're not just passing through, but actually engaging and connecting."

Fortunately, there are lots of ways to learn languages, and getting started is affordable or even free.

START SIMPLY AND BUILD FROM THERE

Aim to reach a "survival level" before you travel. That means abandoning your inhibitions and not getting hung up on grammar or achieving proficiency, said Thomas Sauer, assistant director of resource development for the National Foreign Language Center at the University of Maryland. Travellers can connect and communicate surprisingly well at this level, which he described as a speaking style, akin to that of a toddler, that gets the point across.

For Brandon Shaw, a co-owner of the Tour Guy, a company providing specialised tours in Europe and North America, reaching survival level means focusing on a core of essential verbs (including go, see, eat, drink, have, do and be), then learning a small vocabulary of other words centred on your particular interests for a given trip.

"Then you can literally build a hundred sentences around that," Shaw said.