The One Thing You Can Do To Make This Summer Travel Season The Best Ever

The One Thing You Can Do To Make This Summer Travel Season The Best Ever

How knowing the local language, even if it’s just a few phrases, will make your summer overseas travel the best trip ever.
June 06 2022

Get your passport and your sunscreen ready, summer travel season is here! With all this talk about revenge travel, you’ll want to make sure that this will be the BEST. TRIP. EVER.

There’s one thing that you should do to make the most of your trip: learn the local language! Even if it’s just a few phrases - being multilingual makes travel so much easier, and it opens you to opportunities for new experiences, to make friends, and to connect with the culture. If you’re looking for top travel tips, we’d put this one right at the top. 

 

Be able to take care of yourself (and your family) wherever you go 

Knowing how to speak the local language is a fast-track to you being self-sufficient in the country. Learning and practising vocab that will help you get around is incredibly useful. Need to ask for directions in Barcelona? Figure out Rome’s public transport? Or ask for sightseeing recommendations in Munich? Make sure you’ve got the right phrases locked and loaded.

If you’re doing overseas travel with a young family, being able to take care of you and your family is even more important. Learning the local language is the best family travel tip we can give. Picture this: you’ve landed in Beijing for your first adventure in Asia, but the time difference has totally messed up your kids’ sleep schedules. Nightmare. It’s vital to know how to ask about getting from the airport to your accommodation in Chinese - because the last thing you want with weary little ones is post-flight complications. At the hotel, you want to get to your room quickly, and then figure out the best activities to keep the whole family occupied the next day. In a nutshell, we’re saying that by learning to speak like a native, you’ll be prepped for all the scenarios that come with travel abroad. Family summer vacations? Sorted.

 

Speaking of activities…

That’s another reason to try and get local-level fluent before you go. After all, how are you going to get really stuck into all the best summer travel destinations if you can’t ask what the best things to do are? You might want to find a traditional handcrafted market or visit some local museums in Mexico, hit the hot springs in Japan, or even make plans to catch some Korean theatre.

 

Outside of the seeing and doing, there’s the actual chatting. 

The whole point of learning another language is being able to chat to people from other countries, so you’ll need to go armed with some classic small talk. This is an especially important solo travel tip, because as awesome as it is to see the world by yourself, it’s vital safety advice to know how to ask for help. You’ll also want to tell your solo travel stories to your new friends along the way too, and haggle for a bargain or seven - there’s a budget travel tip for free! We can help you get set to chat about the destinations you’re hitting up next, or reminisce about the places you’ve been, in Portuguese, Mexican Spanish and many more.

 

How We’ve Made Learning Language for Travel Easy On Memrise 

Are you ready to learn? We’ve put together special courses with words and phrases that’ll prep you for places all around the world:

Europe
Asia
Americas

French

Italian

Spanish

German

Portuguese

Japanese

Korean

Chinese

Mexican Spanish

Portuguese

 

This means when you’re hunting for those best summer vacation spots or Googling cheap summer vacations, it’s a great idea to have a think about what language you’re learning or would like to learn, too. Travel abroad is the very best opportunity you’ll have to master your chosen language (just one step ahead of using Memrise, of course!)

 

The Best Way To Learn A New Language

It’s been said that the best way to learn any language is to immerse yourself in it - if you want the best way to learn French for travel, you’ll need to be surrounded by the language constantly. This is why we do things differently at Memrise - our app is built around teaching you how to speak first, then immerse you with thousands of videos of native speakers so you’ll be able to speak the language with confidence - even on your first day. We focus on teaching phrases that are actually useful in everyday life, and giving them access to video clips of real locals so they can hear the authentic way words and phrases are pronounced. This approach has made us known in some circles as the best app to learn languages for travel. We think it’s a no brainer…but we’ll let you decide for yourself!

 

Now, we want to tell you more about how Memrise uses immersive learning to teach you everything you need to know about the language you want to learn.

Hearing and learning from native speakers is the most authentic way to learn a language, so that’s exactly how we do it - with lessons designed around real-life scenarios. You’ll learn about the nitty-gritty, like grammar and translation, as part and parcel of learning with us, but we believe learning to speak a language properly isn’t something you can get from a textbook. We’ve considered what real people really need to know when travelling. For example, if you’re worried about travel after covid, we’ve designed a lesson all about how to travel safely in a post-pandemic world. In short, we give you all the tools you need to get confident in your new language and go from learning to speaking fast - so you’re all set to take it with you on your travels.

Ultimately, learning a language with Memrise is really simple. Sign up is speedy, so you’ll join the millions of people who are already learning languages for free on the Memrise app in no time. Just choose the language you want to learn, and get going.

Start for free!