The world has over 5,000 different languages, including more than twenty with 50 million or more speakers. Travel can bring you into contact with any of these.
This article tries to give an overview of how to cope with language difficulties, an important problem for many travellers. See our List of phrasebooks for information on specific languages.
If none of those work for your situation, you can just smile a lot and use gestures. It is amazing how far this can take you; many people are extremely tolerant. Yet, before switching to body language, it's always a good idea to check the "Respect" sections of the articles for the areas you are going to visit; a well-understood and perfectly innocent gesture in your culture might be a grave insult in another.
If you can't get your message across in the local language, then as an English speaker you are fortunate that many people around the world learn English as a second language. There are many places where quite a few people speak some English and many in the educated classes speak it well.
There are two groups of countries where good English is common enough that a traveller can generally get by speaking only English:
English has also emerged as the international language in science, with over 90% of modern scientific journal articles being published in English, so academics working in scientific fields in reputable universities around the world generally have a functional command of English.
However, how much effort locals will expend in trying to understand and communicate with you is another matter, and varies between individuals and cultures. To some it comes as a complete surprise that a foreigner would attempt to learn any of their language. To others, it is offensive to start a conversation without at first a courtesy in the local language and a local language request to speak English. There is often no correspondence between ability and willingness to speak a language, many people are lacking in confidence, or don't have the time.
As always, be aware of local norms. You'll get a stern look in Frankfurt if you waste a shopkeeper's time trying out your elementary school German, and the interaction will quickly switch to English. However, in Paris, an initial fumbled attempt in French may make your conversational companion much more comfortable. In a Tokyo restaurant, you may get all of their student waiters gathered around your table to try out their English, while they giggle at any attempt you make in Japanese. Obviously, in general, you shouldn't have the expectation that everyone you meet in your travels will speak English.
Nearly anywhere, if you stay in heavily touristed areas and pay for a good hotel, enough of the staff will speak English to make your trip painless.
The map below shows the percentage of English-speakers overall by nation. Keep in mind, however, that this can be quite misleading as English speaking ability can vary dramatically within countries. In nations where English is not the primary language, English-speakers are more likely to be found in major cities and near major tourist attractions. In Japan, for example, there is a higher concentration of English-speakers in Tokyo and Osaka, but the percentage drops significantly when you travel to rural parts of Shikoku or Kyushu.
South Africa, India and Malaysia can be considered English-speaking countries in terms of areas a tourist would normally visit, and for business meetings, but the national percentage reflects the lower education levels in rural towns and communities. Conversely, in Canada, despite being a majority English-speaking country, there are parts of the country where French is the main language and it might be hard to find people with a functional command of English.
Imagine, if you will, a Mancunian, Boston, Jamaica and Sydney sitting around a table having dinner at a restaurant in Toronto. They're regaling each other with stories from their hometowns, told in their distinct accents and local argot. But nevertheless, their server can understand all of them, despite being an immigrant from Johannesburg, and so can any other staff at the restaurant if they need to help them. It is a testament to the English language that despite the many differences in these speakers' native varieties, none of these five need to do more than occasionally ask for something said to be repeated.
It may be easy for native English speakers travelling outside the "Anglosphere" today to think they will be understood in everything they say, everywhere. By day you go to tourist sites, perhaps led around by an English-speaking guide, as local merchants hawk souvenirs at you in the same language as the pop songs booming from the nearby radio; pop songs that were a hit at home last year. By evening, back in the hotel, you watch the BBC or CNN news in your room and then perhaps go out to a nearby bar where, along with equally rapt locals, you take in the night's hottest Premier League match on a big-screen TV.
But the ubiquity of English should not blind — or rather, deafen — us to the reality that many of the English speakers we encounter in foreign countries are only as proficient as they need to be to do their jobs. The gentlemanly guide who artfully and knowledgeably discourses on the history and culture of, say, Angkor Wat to you during your walking tour, and shares further insights about life and work over drinks, might well be completely lost if he had to get through one of your days back home. If you want to get an idea of how your conversations with your travelling companions probably sound to him, watch this video (assuming the experience of having the five years of top grades you got in French leave you no closer to understanding that urgent-sounding announcement that just came over the Paris Metro's public-address system wasn't enough, that is). So we have to meet them halfway with our own use of English.
If our foursome were to be eating at a restaurant in Berlin or Dubai, we should first counsel them not on what to do, but what not to do: repeat what they just said more loudly and slowly, or "translate by volume" as it is jokingly called. It helps only if you're normally fairly soft-spoken or in other situations where it's possible your listener genuinely might not have been able to hear you adequately. But it's ridiculous to assume that your English will suddenly become comprehensible if you just raise your voice. And, since it's often the way we speak to children if they don't seem to understand, your listener may well feel as insulted as you would being spoken to loudly and slowly in Hindi, Tagalog or Hungarian.
What the men around the table need to do, like all native English speakers trying to make themselves understood by a non-native speaker with possibly limited English, is, first and foremost, keep in mind that there are aspects of speaking and understanding English which most native speakers have so mastered as children that they forget even exist, but which often present problems for non-native speakers, even those who may have studied English as a foreign language extensively.
Specifically:
Main article: English language varieties
There are variations that a traveller may need to take account of. An American puts things in the trunk of the car and may need to be cautious about speed bumps while a Briton puts them in the boot and drives slowly over sleeping policemen. A job ad in India may want to hire a fresher (new university graduate) at a salary of 8 lakh (800,000 rupees). A Filipino restaurant has a comfort room or CR for each gender. And so on; almost any dialect has a few things that will sound odd to other English speakers. Native speakers of English will usually be able to figure out what most of these mean from context, though it may be more difficult for foreign language learners of English. The others are generally covered in country articles and we have an overview of the major ones at English language varieties.
Even a native English speaker can sometimes have difficulties with the local accent in other English-speaking countries. For example, a Manhattan bartender tells the story of the day a British couple walked in and said what he thought were the words "To Mount Sinai?" He obligingly told them how to get to the nearby hospital of that name, and was surprised and confused when they repeated the request more firmly. Eventually he figured out that they were asking for "two martinis" and mixed them.
And, of course, as noted above, difficulties are more likely for someone who speaks English as a second language. There are some well-known differences between American and British English, but you will find many more local differences in spelling, and even similar words used for completely different concepts as you travel through countries.
In many areas, it is very useful to learn some of a regional language. This is much easier than trying to learn several local languages, and is generally more useful than any one local language.
Regional languages that are widely used across large areas encompassing many countries are:
Other useful regional languages include:
Even in really out-of-the-way places, you should at least be able to find hotel staff and guides who speak the regional language well. English is unlikely to be much use in a small town in Uzbekistan, for example, but Russian is quite widely spoken.
Regional languages are often useful somewhat beyond the borders of their region. Some Russian is spoken in Northern China and in Israel, some German in Turkey and Russia, and so on. In Uzbekistan, Persian could be worth a try. Portuguese and Spanish are not exactly mutually intelligible per se (especially if you speak Spanish and try to decipher spoken Portuguese), but if you and your conversation partner speak slowly and adapt the speech patterns to the other language, you will probably be able to get the most important points across the language barrier. People in the border regions between Uruguay and Brazil do this quite often. Written Romance languages are often possible to decipher if you know some Latin or any given Romance language and have at least heard of some linguistic shifts (e.g. Latin t and p becoming Spanish b and d, Latin ct becoming Spanish ch and Italian tt), so you may be able to get that estación is probably the same as stazione and other similar stuff. Of course "false friends" are common, so don't overly rely on this method.
Tea
The word for tea in many of the world's languages originally came from Chinese, either te (from Minnan in Fujian) or cha (from Cantonese in Guangdong/Canton). Across much of Asia, it sounds like "cha" (Mandarin and Cantonese, albeit with different tones, and many East Asian languages like Japanese, Korean, etc.) or "chai" (Hindi, Russian, Persian, much of the Balkans, etc.). In many Western European languages and Malay/Indonesian, it sounds like "te", "teh", or "tee".
Exceptions are pretty rare. The Burmese word for tea is lahpet, which may derive from the same ancient ancestor as the Chinese words. Polish, Belarusian, and Lithuanian use variants of herbata, which come from Dutch herba thee or Latin herba thea ("tea herb") and are cognate with English "herb".
A few English words may be understood anywhere, though which ones will vary from place to place. For example, simple expressions like "OK", "bye-bye", "hello" and "thank you" are widely used and understood by many Chinese. Unless you are dealing with academics or people working in the tourism industry, however, that may well be the extent of their English.
French words also turn up in other languages. "Merci" is one way to say "thank you" in languages as disparate as Persian, Bulgarian, Turkish and Catalan.
English idioms may also be borrowed. "Ta-ta" is common in India, for example.
Abbreviations like CD and DVD are often the same in other languages. "WC" (water closet) for toilet seems to be widely used, both in speech and on signs, in various countries, though not in most English-speaking ones.
Words from the tourist trade, such as "hotel", "taxi", and "menu", may be understood by people in that line of work, even if they speak no other English.
Some words have related forms across the Muslim world. Even if you use the form from another language, you might still be understood.
Some loanwords may be very similar in a number of languages. For example, "sauna" (originally from Finnish) sounds similar in Chinese and English among other languages. Naan is Persian for bread; it is used in several Indian languages and in the Uyghur language. Baksheesh might translate as gift, tip or bribe depending on context; it is a common expression in various languages anywhere from Turkey to Sri Lanka.
Sanskrit has also strongly influenced many South Asian and Southeast Asian languages, and numerous Sanskrit loan words can be found in those languages. As an example "bhā́ṣā", the Sanskrit word for "language" becomes "bhāṣā" in Hindi, "pācai" in Tamil, "bahasa" in Malay and Indonesian, "paa-sǎa" in Thai, "phiəsaa" in Khmer and so on. "Roti" is used in many languages to refer to flatbreads, or in some languages even bread in general.
There are many ways to learn a language. Universities or private schools in many places teach most major world languages. If the language is important for business, then there will usually be courses available at the destination; for example in major Chinese cities both some of the universities and many private schools offer Mandarin courses for foreigners.
For travellers, it is common to learn a language from a "sleeping dictionary" (a local lover) or to just pick it up as you go along, but often more formal instruction is available as well. In countries where many languages are spoken but there is an official national language — such as Mandarin, Filipino or Hindi — most school teachers have experience teaching the official language, and often some of them would welcome some extra income.
There are also many online resources. Wikivoyage has phrasebooks for many languages. An Open Culture site has free lessons for 48 languages.
Variance, dialects and accents add diversity and colour to travel. Similar to English, other languages can also have dialectal differences between different parts of the world. For instance, there are some differences in standard Mandarin between mainland China and Taiwan, and while they are largely mutually intelligible, misunderstandings can arise from these differences (e.g. 小姐 xiǎojiě is the equivalent of the title "Miss" in Taiwan, but means "prostitute" in mainland China). Similarly, there are such differences between Brazilian and European Portuguese (e.g. bicha is a line of people waiting in Portugal, but a very derogatory way of referring to a gay man in Brazil), as well as between Latin American and European Spanish (e.g. coger is the verb "to take (a bus, train, etc.) in Spain, but means "to fornicate" in Latin America).
It is fairly common for language to be part of the reason for various travel choices.
In some areas, your choice of language can have political connotations. In some former Soviet republics and other former Eastern Bloc countries, Russian may be a symbol of Soviet oppression, and many locals may well feel offended if you speak Russian to them as if that were their language. Several other languages may similarly be associated with occupation, oppression or hostile relations (e.g. Mandarin in Hong Kong). Often there are still large minorities with those languages as their mother tongue, and individuals may have other ties to them, so don't mock those languages either.
Often the offensive language is one most locals have studied, and one that you studied because it is widespread in a region you are interested in. In such cases it may help to start the conversation with the few words you know in the local language, hint on your knowing that other one and hope the local will switch.
Related: List of phrasebooks