I plan on going abroad in the coming year & want to know enough of the local language to ask basic things. Does anyone know something like 100 or 250 words that I could memorize to get across basic ideas & questions? I don’t care about being grammatical correct just enough to cave man speak during my time there.

  • Redacted@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago
    1. Hello
    2. Goodbye
    3. Please
    4. Thank you
    5. Yes
    6. No
    7. Excuse me
    8. Sorry
    9. Help
    10. What
    11. Who
    12. Where
    13. When
    14. Why
    15. How
    16. Which
    17. This
    18. That
    19. Here
    20. There
    21. I
    22. You
    23. He
    24. She
    25. We
    26. They
    27. My
    28. Your
    29. His
    30. Her
    31. Our
    32. Their
    33. Name
    34. Friend
    35. Family
    36. Food
    37. Water
    38. Eat
    39. Drink
    40. Need
    41. Want
    42. Love
    43. Like
    44. Dislike
    45. Buy
    46. Sell
    47. Open
    48. Close
    49. Day
    50. Night
    51. Morning
    52. Afternoon
    53. Evening
    54. Today
    55. Tomorrow
    56. Yesterday
    57. Week
    58. Month
    59. Year
    60. Happy
    61. Sad
    62. Hot
    63. Cold
    64. Good
    65. Bad
    66. Big
    67. Small
    68. More
    69. Less
    70. Many
    71. Few
    72. House
    73. Room
    74. Bathroom
    75. Kitchen
    76. Street
    77. City
    78. Country
    79. Language
    80. Number
    81. Time
    82. Money
    83. Price
    84. Left
    85. Right
    86. Straight
    87. Stop
    88. Start
    89. Work
    90. School
    91. Teacher
    92. Student
    93. Friend
    94. Help
    95. Beautiful
    96. Ugly
    97. Easy
    98. Difficult
    99. Open
    100. Close
    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
      0·
      1 month ago

      This assumes the language in question follows the same rules as, in this case, English.

      When

      In many of the common uses of “when” in English. Mandarin (Chinese) as an example doesn’t use one word for that mixed idea of English’s “when”.

      One common English usage of “when” would be substitute for literally “which time”. Or even more complicated, the Mandarin language has a word for the concept of a “completed action” where there is no single word in English that translates. While English may conjugate verbs to communicate when an event occurred or will occur, Mandarin skips this.

      An English phrase like:

      “I ate breakfast this morning” when conceptually translated to Mandarin, then literally translated back to English would be: “I eat breakfast. Finished. Today. In the morning.”

      I’ve been told that the Finnish language uses something similar for time words (instead of conjugating verbs), but I don’t know if that’s accurate. If there’s a Finnish speaker reading this, I’d be interested in knowing if this is true.

    • Oka@sopuli.xyz
      0·
      1 month ago

      That…seems like a language i could learn, and could probably be taught in schools as a second language.

      I feel like the only reason we use English as much as we do is tradition. Time to break tradition.

      • 📛Maven@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        0·
        1 month ago

        To be fair though, speaking as a fan of toki pona, it’s important to point out that it is far from a list of essential words, it’s intentionally not designed to be able to communicate a majority of essential concepts clearly. It’s designed to be able to communicate simple, positive concepts easily, but to require thought and ambiguity to communicate negative or complex concepts. It’s literally meant to make you have to think more positively.

  • Muehe@lemmy.ml
    0·
    1 month ago

    For many European languages and some non-European ones there is the CEFR, so you could look for an “A1” or “A2” level language course in whatever you want to learn. They aim to establish exactly this basic level of communication.

  • Diddlydee@feddit.ukEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    Where is ‘abroad’? Many countries will speak English pretty well, so you may not need it depending on where you are. Any vocab book for that country will give you the basics if English isn’t commonly spoken

  • aaron@infosec.pub
    0·
    1 month ago

    This might sound daft but I’ve traveled for years and literally found that mime, the more extravagant the better, works fine.

    • AmidFuror@fedia.io
      0·
      1 month ago

      Agreed. It’s too difficult to learn phrases like “Help, I’m trapped in an invisible box” and “There is an unexpected rope here” in a new language.

  • ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org
    0·
    1 month ago

    I try to learn the following sentences in the language of a country I go to if I don’t know anything at all about that language:

    • Hello, as polite as possible
    • Goodbye, as polite as possible
    • A beer please
    • I’m sorry I don’t speak <language>: do you speak English?

    I find this quite enough to strike up a conversation in most of the world. When people don’t automatically switch to English - perhaps because they don’t know it well enough - then I try another “universal” language like Spanish or French (universal mostly because of past colonialism, sadly). That implies speaking those languages of course.

    If the locals won’t speak English because of a prejudice against English (mostly French-speaking regions) I don’t even bother with the “I’m sorry…” bit. I just let them figure out by themselves that conversation is going to be difficult.

    If the locals are anti-Americans - very common, and getting more and more common - I affect a British accent. I wouldn’t fool a Brit for a New York minute but I’m convincing enough for a non-native English speaker to avoid being associated with the US.

  • huquad@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    The invention of language made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.

  • otp@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    1 month ago

    The minimal amount of words to communicate is 0.

    If you want to be functional in a new country, you’d need to figure out what kinds of things you want to say and how functional you want to be.