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    This article is a travel topic

The world has over 5,000 different languages, including over 20 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.

Coping without a language

There are several ways to cope with travel in countries where you do not speak the local language.

You can learn some of the local language and/or a regional language. It will rarely be practical to learn a language for one trip, but bring a phrasebook! Learning the basics of pronunciation, greetings, how to ask directions, and numbers (for transactions) can be enough fulfill nearly all the essentials of travel on your own, and can be a fun activity on long flights or bus delays.

While locals are generally understanding and do not expect foreigners to be fluent in their language, any attempt to speak the local language is generally appreciated, even if your vocabulary is restricted to some basic greetings and numbers, and your pronunciation is not very good. This applies too in areas where English is widely spoken.


When one or both players has limited skills in whatever language you are using, keep it simple! Keep sentences short. Use the present tense. Avoid idioms. Use single words and hand gestures to convey meaning.

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.

It is also fairly common in things like negotiating a price to write down numbers or key them into a calculator for display to the other party.

Regional languages

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.

The world's major regional languages

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, some German in Turkey, and so on. In Uzbekistan, Persian could be worth a try.

Using English

English is very much a world language — it is spoken in many countries and widely taught as a second language — and it is possible to travel almost anywhere using only English.

The map below shows the percentage of English-speakers for various nations. Keep in mind, however, that English-speakers are not evenly spread over a country. 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 more rural parts, like Shikoku or Kyushu.

English-speaking % of population by country (grey=no data)



Widely used expressions


French words also turn up in other languages. "Merci" is one way to say "thank you" in Persian and in Bulgarian.




Some words have related forms across the Muslim world.

  • "Thank you" is shukran in Arabic, teshekkür in Turkish, tashekor in Dari (Afghan Persian), shukria in Urdu.
  • The word for peace, used as a greeting, is shalom in Hebrew, salaam in Arabic, selamat in Indonesian.



The word for tea is approximately "chai" across most of Asia (Hindi, Russian, Persian, Turkish, ...), "cha" in standard Mandarin and Cantonese (albeit with different tones) and "teh" in the Minnan dialect and in Indonesian (in fact, the English word tea was derived from teh).

Language as a reason for travel



