chasm54

I've been touring for a long time. Decades, in fact. But with the exception of one trip to Tanzania, all my touring has been in Europe and North America. As a result language difficulties haven't figured much - English as a first language, supplemented by schoolboy French and a smattering of restaurant Spanish and Italian has been enough to get me what I need.

But it would be interesting to do some developing world touring before I get too old to be adventurous. And the thread on equipment in the developing world got me thinking. How does one manage when upcountry in Myanmar, or Kyrgyzstan, or wherever and in need of repairs, or supplies, or just advice on routes when the road is washed out? There are plenty of people here with experience of touring in extremely remote and largely monolingual environments, and I'd be interested to hear stories of how they've coped. If they're funny, so much the better.

saddlesores

i've toured in china, thailand, cambodia, vietnam, laos, myanmar, malaysia.
i speak passable chinese (better than some chinese, hahah), and nitnoy thai.
in big cities, can always find someone that speaks english. smaller towns
schoolkids can help, or know a local english teacher....who may (or NOT!)
speak english. monks in wats/temples often can speak some english.
miming, drawing pictures can work with "things" but not directions.

first thing you want to do is get yourself a phrasebook. lonely planet makes a small one
with the essentials for 5 languages:thai, viet, khmer, lao, burmese.

learn the numbers and how to count, helpful with kilometer posts.


learn some useful phrases: how far is....? which road goes to.....? where's the w.c.?
where is a guesthouse/market/bank.....?

write the most important ones on a small paper to carry in your handlebar bag. i keep
the ones i use most on small cards in the mapcase, visible so i don't have to root around
to find them when needed.

of course, you could use cell phone apps. there's one that uses your cell phone camera,
take photo of chinese menu, text recognition software will translate for you. if you
trust the translations.

major highways will usually have english, or at least a recognizable approximation of
where you're headed.


of course out in the countryside, you never know what kind of signage (if any) you'll
come across.


try to find a bilingual map. if not, compare to an english map, know the pronunciation
and characters for your destination and some towns along the way. very useful if you
need to take a bus. to/from cities will be in local characters, any announcements will
be in local language. if in english, be careful.

things to watch out for:

locals have their own names for towns and villages, their local dialect may (will!) be
incomprehensible. town names on maps may not match town names on signs may
not match town names used in the towns.

locals often don't know the area outside a few km or less around their village. heck,
some locals don't know the name of their village. "excuse me, what place is this?"
"town" "okay, what's the name of the town?" "here."

locals mostly cannot read maps. they love maps, and will gladly tear yours out of
your hands to look at it. they can't help you, but they think it's awesome magic.

locals do not know how to measure distance. in china, if you ask how far, the answer
is usually "very far" "not far" or "too far to go on a bicycle" if you ask how many
kilometers, the answer is always "2", whether it's two or twenty or seventy-five.

some languages do not have words for yes/no, or they aren't used. if used, wrong.
as a foreign traveler, never ask "is this the way to....?" or "is this the road to....?"
cause the answer is always yes.

do not think you're clever by asking "where does this road go?" because the answer
will be "where do you want to go?" if you name a destination, that's where the
road goes.

do not get more clever by asking "how do i get to....?" as you'll be told to go to
the bus station, or told you can't get there from here.

rex615

This has the potential for a good thread. (Subscribing)

My almost off topic contribution is this: One challenge I find in Latin America is that beyond the language barrier, there is a cultural issue with directions.

IME Americans tend to be the best at giving directions. They tell you "go 5 miles north, then turn right at the church, if you get to the bridge, you went too far.". Most are however skeptical you can ride 5 miles on a bicycle and have very little sense of terrain.

Latins tend to start "do you know where the blue church is?" They also tend to mention a lot of landmarks you will pass on they way, none of which require any action. Then when i pass the big mango tree, i remember something was said about a tree, was I supposed to turn here?

Many addresses in Costa Rica include nearby landmarks. "Next to the green church" or "diagonal from Pulperia Chepe". Some actually use the word "antiguo" which means it is no longer there. "Next to the former School".

saddlesores

i'd like to tour there, but i never could quite get a handle on latin. it was all greek to me.

Sed hoc primum caput eget nisi si quem paulo longius progressus vias et si velis venire aliqua scribat et non de omni vel youll 'postulo ut satus, ut ut dixi, hoc capite, uh, unde vos vultis abire?

bikemig 

I don't think this is necessarily a cultural difference. Certainly in Spain or Argentina, for example, you'll may get directions more like the ones you are accustomed to (but I haven't been far off the beaten track in either country and things do work differently in rural areas). Costa Rica is different but then people tend to navigate by the use of landmarks since street names and numbers tend to be chaotic to non-existent (at least they were when I was there last).

That's not terribly different by the way from navigating in Boston (at least before GPS units became common). Street signage is pretty chaotic, the streets typically do not have uniform names (they often change the name of a street after a block or two), and they are laid out along paths that people created long before the automobile showed up. When I first moved to Boston (pre GPS days, , I was totally at sea driving a car. Public transportation is better than driving esp. in Boston but sometimes you have to drive. You can't really navigate, as I said, by means of signage. Finally the light bulb went off and I started driving by using landmarks and that got me oriented.

As late as the turn of the century, that's how we gave directions in the US as well (by using landmarks). There's Ken Burns documentary called "Horatio's Drive: America's First Road Trip" narrated by Tom Hanks. It's about a vermont doctor who was the first person to drive across the US in 1903 along with his dog naturally, . Horatio's Drive . About the Film | PBS

It's a lot of fun and a great social history of the US. At the beginning of the film, they talk about how directions were given in the US. It is a lot like you described Costa Rica.

bikemig 

pobre de vos, .

azza_333

So far I have only toured in English speaking countries and Japan, my Japanese ability is good enough to have a chat about most things, I have and a few interesting experiences in Japan though, like trying to explain what happened in a crash to the police.

imi

If nothing else, knowing "Hello" and "Thank you" with a big smile and a respectful nod/bow of the head can get you a long long way

bikemig 

Finland is a bit tough language wise. Yeah a lot of Finns speak English but it not an Indo-European language (related to Hungarian and one of the Baltic states). There are some basic words that most European languages share which is really helpful but not in Finland. Plus the mosquitoes there put the ones in Minnesota to shame. Best bread I've ever had though and the saunas are pretty cool.

auldgeunquers

If the saunas are cool, you're dong it wrong.

bikemig 

C'est une malapropism, malheureusement,

chasm54

Well, up to a point. It certainly disposes people to try to be helpful. But I'm not sure it's going to cut the mustard when the question is remotely technical.

i may be making too much of this, of course, having been scarred for life years ago in Spain when attempting to order chicken by saying polla instead of pollo. The hilarity among the waiting staff was something to behold.

@saddlesores, speaking Chinese and Thai is tantamount to cheating, really. The phrasebook/cards idea is a good one, but I think I might be struggling with recognising the characters. And I absolutely get the dialect thing. Rudimentary Castilian Spanish didn't help enormously even in some bits of Catalonia. I could make myself understood, but couldn't understand the replies. For that matter, there are parts of the UK in which I have to concentrate to pick up the local accents...

rex615

acantor

Re: dialects. This is a tough nut to crack, as there may be no way to learn them in advance, even if one knows the root language. I'm able to communicate in French when I am in Paris, Quebec City, or Geneva, but I'm lost when visiting certain areas of rural France and Quebec!

I think it's worthwhile to invest time learning a language before a visit. Before heading off for Ticino and northern Italy, I signed up for a 15-week introductory Italian course at a local school, and did my homework every week! On the tour, I was able to ask for directions, understand signs and menus, etc. Although I couldn't have "real" conversations, I knew enough to scrape by.

Even a little learning can go a long way. 35 years ago I hitchhiked through Turkey. On the day I arrived, I happened to meet another traveller who had spent significant time in the country. He taught me important basics about the language, e.g., when you think you need to communicate "yes" (evet) or "no" (hayir), the words you want to use may be "exist" (var) or "does not exist" (yok). This information proved to be valuable.

A truck driver who picked me up tried to induce me into having sex with him (while he was driving!). At first I feigned not to understand. He persisted. So I said "hayir" ("no"), but he was undeterred. Then I remembered my lesson, and said "yok!" ("doesn't exist!") The driver relented, zipped up, and left me alone!

saddlesores

i feel your pain, having had a similar experience in germany.

went into a shop to get an inner tube ~~~ "schlauch"

but my poor pronunciation made it into ~~~~ "schlumpf"



to my horror, he had one in stock!
oh my lady gaga!
he brought out one of these in the
shape of a dingie bell!!!

https://bluebuddies.com/gallery/Regul...ella_Smurf.jpg

axolotl

Actually, there seem to be remarkably few on this forum who have pedaled outside of the usual places or who have expressed an interest in doing so. (I started a thread about touring in developing countries not long ago.)

Native English speakers are spoiled, as it has become the de facto world language. I like studying languages and can speak several to varying degrees. Probably the most linguistically isolated I've felt was when I was touring in Laos. I was able to make myself understood with the help of a phrasebook. As was also suggested, it helps to have a bilingual map, too.

I toured in Czechoslovakia back when it was one country and communist. At that time, kids there studied Russian in school, not English. Most adults who were over the age of 40 then could often speak German, however. Anyone who worked in a hotel, restaurant, or bar, was required to be able to speak German because the vast majority of tourists at that time came from either East or West Germany. I got by OK by speaking German.

In Sri Lanka, road signs and many business signs were in English, and I could virtually always find someone who spoke decent English. When I arrived in one town on my bike, I was approached by a German who told me he was on a bike, too. He initiated our conversation in English. While we were talking, I was approached by an English-speaking tout who wanted to get me to stay in his guesthouse. (This didn't happen as often as I understand happens in India.) Anyway, the tout got to be annoying and wouldn't leave us alone, so I started speaking German with the German guy, and the tout eventually left since he couldn't understand us.

There have been several times when I've translated for folks. I remember overhearing a Japanese traveler and a French traveler trying to converse in English. They both had really strong accents and couldn't understand each other's English, so I helped them out. I helped an American converse with 4 French tourists in California. Afterwards, the American guy asked me where I learned my English.

Another time in a hostel in the French Alps, I was looking at my maps and another traveler asked me in excellent French if I happened to have a guidebook for Switzerland. I told him that I did, but that the book was in English. He said that that was fine, and asked if he could he look at it for a few minutes. I got my guidebook and we continued to speak in French. After several minutes, he suddenly switched into English, the Australian version. So I also switched into English, the American version. A young woman who was seated nearby interrupted us because she was taken aback by our sudden language switch. The same thing happened at an airline office in Paris, where I was trying to learn about my lost luggage. The guy at the counter sounded like a native French speaker to me, and we had been conversing entirely in French. After we had spoken for a few minutes and he had located my flight info, he suddenly switched into native speaker English, the Irish version.

I used to have a French accent when I spoke Spanish. I think I've mostly gotten rid of it. Anyway, I was touring in Mexico with a friend, and a young Mexican woman was telling us about some places to visit near her town. I didn't understand all of what she was saying, and she asked me if I spoke French. I said yes, and she proceeded to tell me everything in fluent French (which I speak better than Spanish). It turned out that her grandfather was originally from France and she grew up speaking both Spanish & French.

travelinhobo

I've only biked in Venezuela as far as 3rd world countries go (tho some of Europe's countries in the near past could have been considered 2nd world), so not a lot of advice. However, I have travelled thru several poor countries and it's all the same (but even better with a bike): if someone wants to communicate with you, they'll figure out a way to do it if they don't speak your language. I'm always amazed at how mime sign language works when the participants can't speak with each other. When you're on the bike, people want to communicate even more with you because it's not something they see too often, if at all. Since English is the popular language at the moment (better start learning Chinese though!), usually someone will know some level of it.

rex615

Interesting you choose a Nahuatl name. I like.

gauvins

I like to download google translate language files (such that GT will work offline). Far from perfect but useful nonetheless

dorkypants

That must be a really ancient sign, the distances are all in miles, not kilometers. [I grew up in Burma and still read a little Burmese.]

dorkypants

I find street names useless out in the countryside in France and Italy. It's much more useful to know the towns along the way to your destination and follow signs from one town to the next town.

I've been in the Veneto (Venetian mainland, NE Italy), where I came along a street to a fork and all 3 branches at the junction were signed with the same street name! Then there are the wonderful French junctions where there's a sign pointing one way to "Toutes Directions", while a sign pointing the opposite way says "Autres Directions"!

dorkypants

Must be for Android? The option doesn't seem to exist for iOS (much less Windows/OS X/Linux)

gauvins

Good point.

Walter S

It's very true that some are better than others at giving directions. I'm not so sure it's a cultural difference though. Some people, like you say, confuse the situation by telling you about landmarks you'll pass, with it often unclear to the listener which of these are important.

A personal favorite example of useless information is the directions my mother in law gives. They include instructions like "make a hard left where the Methodist church used to be"!

acantor

This must be a common occurrence. While cycling through London (England) I asked for directions, and was instructed to turn where the such-and-such pub used to be!

When I responded that I was a visitor to London, and would not be able to recognize the landmark, my helper looked at me quizzically, and repeated the instructions.

Given that we both spoke English, maybe the story illustrates that separating cultural from linguistic differences can be challenging!