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...