The dream for many of us is to live abroad and study a new language. It’s also totally doable – even if it does present a few unique challenges. If you want to move abroad and learn a language, then you’re in the right place.
Think for a moment about all the positives: You’ll get to make new friends, experience new cuisine, take in the sights and generally immerse yourself in a new culture, language and lifestyle. For many, it sounds like heaven.
In this article, I’m going to focus on one specific benefit of moving abroad to study a new language. Meet people and make new friends who can help you on your way. New friends abroad help us to settle in, and they provide a friendly, warm and fabulous way of learning a language as proficiently and as quickly as possible. They make it a joy to learn!
The Buddy System
If you’ve already made the decision to move abroad a few months while learning a new language, you’re probably super excited by now. Maybe it was a huge decision on your part, and maybe you did a lot of thinking about it. You weighed up the pros and cons but in the end, you just had to do it!
Great. Only, there’s one tiny snag: You don’t have any friends in that country. Damn. They’re all strangers and none of them understand what you’re feeling. They’re all going to be busy with their days – too busy to stop and become your friend just like that *clicks fingers*.
So the question becomes: How do you learn a new language effectively without having someone to engage in proper conversations with?
The answer is simple, if a tad scary: Make friends with the locals! Don’t be shy – chat to them. Most people on our planet are friendly and open to chatting to strangers. You see it all the time in bars, coffee houses, parks and even in the streets. If you’ve got something to say, and if you’re an interesting person, they will respond.
The idea is that you don’t hide away in your hostel room, but instead put yourself out there. Be confident and avoid spending your days binging on Netflix while reading a textbook. Get out there and meet people!
True, this can sound easier than it is, and living abroad while learning a new language is daunting. But once you start befriending the locals and they start recognising you, your confidence will grow. Before you know it, they’ll be inviting you out for a coffee or to parties.
But only if you put yourself out there in the first place. Moreover, while going to parties or bars and getting drunk is fun, it’s not the only thing you should do with people. The idea is that you properly immerse yourself in the whole culture.
Step one, then, is to befriend the natives. But how do you do that? How do you make friends abroad?!
Offer Them Something
Before you can make friends, it’s really important that you are a friend. In other words, offer people something. Walk up to a stranger and drop their guard for them by being a good person. That makes it much easier to move abroad and learn a language.
What can you offer? Anything you can think of. It doesn’t even matter if the other person refuses (they probably will). What matters is that you’ve got the ball rolling. You could offer them a piece of gum or you could offer to help them carry their drinks to their table if it looks like they’re struggling. It can be anything!
A smart idea is to pack something simple and useful with you whenever you go out. For example, if it’s a hot day and you’re walking in a park, you could take two cold drinks with you – one for you and one for someone else. Then, when you sit down to take a breather and can see someone is exhausted from the heat, you could offer them one of your drinks. It’s that simple!
As I said, they’ll probably turn you down, but you mustn’t let that bother you. The whole point is to initiate a conversation. From there, you can transition to chatting about the weather. There’s even a good chance they’ll make this transition first. Then, as the minutes pass by, the both of you will begin to really warm to this and the conversation will flow.
Ultimately, you want to do this with a few different people. After all, you won’t really hit it off with everyone you stop and chat to, so the idea is to spend the afternoon initiating contact with a few men and women. Buy as many cold drinks as you can afford! (or stick to gum, it’s cheaper). You never know what could come of it. You might end up getting involved in a heavy discussion on politics, or you might find your football soulmate!
Ask Them For a Small Favour
People like to help others. It’s just the way we are! So when you ask a native for a favour, you’re kinda doing them a favour – they want to help you!
One time, I was in Asia, sitting around waiting for my bus to depart. It was going to be a long bus ride – as long as 12 hours! I was sitting next to a native speaker, a lady, when I hit upon an idea: I’d go and grab some good for the trip, and maybe a book or a magazine, and I would ask her to save my seat.
She said she would, so I bounded out of there, bought a few things, and headed back. I then offered her a snack (which she declined).
What I did had served two purposes: One, I’d loaded up on food for the trip. Two, I’d broken the ice with this native speaker. Once the bus driver fired up the engine and got us moving, I offered the lady my hand and asked her about any great places she thinks I should visit.
By the end of the twelve hours, I had a new friend! She even talked to me about local politics and taught me how to barter with merchants for a better price.
Ask Questions
Too few of us ask questions in our own language, but asking questions are great ways to get conversations rolling.
What kind of questions should you be asking? It doesn’t matter! Ask anything! This is another secret to moving abroad and learning a language.
In fact, as a non-native in a strange new place, you’re allowed to ask questions, and the locals will be more than happy to help you out of a fix. Just be polite, be friendly and they will stop to help you.
Let’s say, for example, you’re eating at a restaurant. You’re browsing the menu, but while a lot of it certainly looks appetising, you’re not quite sure what it means. So what do you do? You could go ahead and order something you recognise, or you could ask the waiter or waitress to explain a few of the dishes to you.
Of course, this doesn’t automatically mean you’re going to now be best friends with the waiters. But this sort of thing eases you into speaking to natives, and it helps to build your confidence. You could then ask people in the street for directions, and you don’t need to stop there. Once you’ve got the directions, you could maybe comment on their t-shirt or whatever. One time during the World Cup, I stopped a Swiss lady and asked for directions. Then, I asked what she thought of the Swiss football team’s performance at the World Cup so far. Before I knew it, we had been chatting away about football for ten minutes!
The objective is to take an interest. Be interested in people and things. Make them feel good by taking an interest in their culture – their art, their sports etc. Make them feel important by asking them questions that they’ll know the answer to. Think about it, we all prefer non-natives who take an active interest in our culture over non-natives who don’t even try to understand anything about what makes our culture what it is.
Of course, you don’t want to grill anyone. Just take an interest in things the way a small child does. Also, try to take an interest in someone where there’s the potential for a captive audience so that others might join in the conversation. Bars are obvious but you could also try places like beaches and bus stops. Or maybe even a queue for the supermarket!
Just Say Hello!
Often, the easiest way to break the ice with someone new is just to say ‘Hello!’
And yet so many of us don’t do it!
You could say hi to someone, introduce yourself and shake their hand. Now, I’m not saying that you’ll literally make a friend on the spot. Some people just aren’t interested in socialising. But a surprising amount of people are. And if you can make them laugh while they’re bored, standing at a bus stop, or frustrated in a long queue? You’re in! We all love someone who can brighten the mood temporarily. And as they say, you need to shoot your shot all the time, otherwise you’ll never know.
If you’re worried about being self-conscious abroad, just try it once or twice and see what happens. I can guarantee that most people will smile back and shake your hand. And it’s not about being supremely confident – it’s about being open. I’ve seen a lot of good language learners, and I can say for a fact that they’re not what I’d call super outgoing. In fact, a lot of them are quite introverted. But what they are is open. Sure, they’re nervous about walking up to strangers and saying hello. But they just do it!
As the language learner, I’m afraid that the onus is on you to make the first move. It’s very unlikely that a native will walk up to a non-native and start a conversation. It’s mostly always the other way around. They might stare at you – but that’s as far as it’ll go!
And it’s not that locals are rude. They’re probably a bit busy, or they think you don’t want to be bothered. And they’re hardly likely to ask you for directions, ha!
But once you start a conversation, they’ll be more than willing to engage with you. Try this and it’ll be much easier to move abroad and learn a language.
Go To The Same Places Often
I have a trick that I use even in my own city – I go to the same places often.
The idea is that people get to recognise you. They serve you dinner each week, they bring you your coffee or beer. Eventually, they say Hi to you – or you say it to them. Before you know it, you’re making small talk. Then, you realise that you’ve got something in common and within a few weeks or months, a friendship starts to bloom!
You can do the exact same thing abroad. Yes, I totally recommend that you try as many places as possible to soak up as much of the culture as you can. But you should also pick one or two places that you really like, and visit them often.
They don’t always have to be bars of cafes by the way. It could be a local drugstore, or even a specific bench at the local park. Bars and cafes are better because they’re more intimate, and you can pretty much guarantee that the same people will be working each week (on different shifts, of course).
Over time, they’ll come to expect you. And for you, well, you’ll become like a part of the furniture! The folk will recognise you, and may even start serving you on first-name terms. Pretty soon, you’ll be absorbed into their community and they may even say they’re glad to see you this morning.
By turning up to the same place often, you’re improving your chances of making friends. The staff will smile at you, they’ll know what your favourite order is, and they may even share little stories with you. You can share stories with them, too, and talk to them about where you’ve come from and what you’re planning to do while in this country.
And if you really gel with someone, maybe they could show you around?
Ask For An Introduction
Let’s imagine you make a local friend. This is another great tip when you move abroad to learn a language. The next step is to make sure this friend opens up a network for you in your new country. In other words, you want to get them to introduce you to more people.
Now, this doesn’t mean you’re “using” your new friend. On the contrary, you’re in this country not to make just one friend but many friends!
And I’m pretty sure this hypothetical person has a whole circle of friends themselves. So the next time they hit the bars on a Friday night, maybe you could go along with them? Or maybe they have someone “I know you’ll instantly get along with!”
However, you may have to ask them to introduce you to other people. For many of you reading this, this means leaving your comfort zone. But that’s what life is all about! You could explain to them that, as a non-native speaker getting acquainted in a new country, you’d love to meet more people, and you’d love it if your new friend could introduce you to some more of their friends.
For example, you could say “fancy going for a beer on Friday? Why not bring a few of your friends along, too?”
Chances are they will say Yes. Why wouldn’t they?!
When Friday night swings around, you just need to mingle in their group. And, hey, they might not go to bars. Maybe they go to fun events, such as paint balling. If so, tag along. Branch out, extend your network, meet as many people as possible. Because it just might transpire that, while your new friend is really cool, one of their friends is actually more on your level. And before you know it, you’ll be mingling with all kinds of people. Perhaps you’ll all go to a theme park together, who knows?!
To wrap up, these are 6 techniques that YOU can use when abroad. These techniques will help you to open up to new people and make new friends. You don’t have to be super confident right from the start, but the more you talk to people and initiate conversations, the more confident you’ll become.
The idea is to travel more, to talk to more people, to engage them, to ask questions, and to immerse yourself in their unique culture. Absorb everything that’s going on around you but – most importantly – be a good human. Be nice to people, be polite and friendly. Over time, you’ll be hugely rewarded. Not only will your language improve, but you may even find that you make a few friends for life. Now, isn’t that amazing?!
If you have moved abroad and learned a language, why not take a moment to tell us about it in the comments below?
