Learning a new foreign langauge is always a difficult task, but if you're planning to travel to another country it really helps to be able to communicate with the locals. If you set this as a reasonable goal for yourself, the job of learning a new language becomes much more manageable. Essentially there are three areas you need to focus on separately: grammar, vocabulary, and reading the langauge.

    With the aim of becoming proficient enough to move around freely in a foreign country, vocabulary should be your top priority. Simply knowing the words will usually allow you to make yourself understood, even if you don't string them together perfectly. Lucky for you, vocab is also the easiest thing to tackle. The key to learning the vocabulary is simple: make flashcards. Start by searching the internet or looking through a phrasebook, and pick out some categories you want to learn. Dining, asking directions, using public transportation, and navigating through customs are usually the most important areas where you'll want to develop your language skills. If you don't have a lot of time, don't waste it by learning phrases such as "Do you speak English?".

    Make the vocab from each category into stacks of flashcards. At this point, the amount you have to learn may look intimidating, but you'll soon find that by breaking it up into chunks you'll quickly learn and retain the vocabulary. Pick a category to start with, shuffle the stack, and pull out about 5 cards to go through. Start by learning to recognize the foreign word, quizzing yourself on the English translation. When you have those down, flip the cards over and go through them again. By following this pattern you're less likely to have cards that you get eternally stuck on. Once you feel like you have a good grasp of these 5 cards, put them aside and grab another 5. Repeat the same process, then add your new 5 to the pile you've set aside, shuffle, and go through all of them. Keep doing this until you've conquered the entire stack. As you progress, you will be constantly reinforcing the words, making it very unlikely that you'll forget them.

    A smaller part of your language learning should be devoted to picking up some of the basic grammar. If you were studying the language in college, this would probably be the bulk of your work. Thankfully, though, you don't have to worry nearly as much about it since you just need to establish basic communication skills. Languages vary significantly in the complexity of their grammar, which means some will be much more difficult to learn than others. But, you need to make sure you know the basic word order. In English, the subject of a sentence goes before the verb, and the object goes after the verb. If I say "I kicked the ball", I am the subject, kicked （or "to kick"） is the verb, and the ball is the object. Some langauges, though, do funny things with this order. Japanese is subject-object-verb, which means the action comes at the very end of the sentence. And slavic languages like Russian don't have any fixed order at all, vastly complicating things. In langauges without word order, nouns have to be changed according to their function in a sentence. This is called gramatical case, and while it's a big portion of learning these langauges, it's not for the faint of hearted. For this reason, you can probably safely ignore it for now.

    Like grammar, writing works very differently for different langauges. For example, Chinese has fairly simple grammar, which might be a relief. But the written langauge uses thousands of different characters, each one representing a word or part of a word. Memorizing a lot of these is a task you'll have to decide for yourself if you want to undertake. If you are learning a language that uses the latin alphabet, however, you really should put in the effort to learn how each letter is pronounced. Often, letters are pronounced differently than they are in English, but they usually make only one sound. English is the oddball here, we have 5 vowel letters and about 12 vowel sounds. Spanish, Czech, German, etc… are much more consistent, which means their alphabets make the langauge easier to learn. Of course, there are many other systems out there. Arabic and hebrew generally only write the consonants, Japanese has a symbol for each syllable （about 50 in all） plus special Kanji that represent words. But remember, your task here is to learn just enough to read street signs and labels at the supermarket.

    If you've managed to master some of the language before you travel, you will be received much better in your destination country. Locals everywhere like knowing that you've made the effort to speak some of their language. Best of all, learning a new language expands your mind in a way that nothing else can. You never know when the knowledge you've gained might come in handy.

    學習一門新的外語始終是一項艱巨的任務，但是，如果你打算去另一個國家旅行，它真的很有助于讓你能夠與當地人溝通。如果你把這作為自己的一個合理目標，學習一門新語言的工作會變得更加易辦。本質上有三個方面你需要集中精力，它們分別是：語法、詞匯和閱讀該語言。

    為了成為足夠熟練地在外國自由走來走去的人，詞匯量應該是你的當務之急。簡單地知道只言片語，即使你沒有完整地把它們串在一起，也往往會讓你能夠表達自己的意思。幸運的是，詞匯對你也是最容易處理的事情。學習詞匯的關鍵很簡單：制作抽認卡片。從查閱互聯網或者瀏覽常用語手冊開始，并且挑選一些你想要學習的類別。就餐、問路、使用公共交通以及通過海關的導覽通常是你想要提高你的語言能力的最重要的范圍。如果你沒有很多的時間，則通過學習短語例如"Do you speak English?（你會講英語嗎？）"來不把時間浪費掉。

    從每個類別制作詞匯表，放入成堆的抽認卡之中。在這時，你必須學會的數量可能看起來有些嚇人，但是馬上你就會發現，通過將其分割開來，你會很快學會并且保留住這些詞匯。從選擇一個類別開始，洗洗這些卡片，并且抽出大約 5 張卡片來過一過。開始先學習認識外來詞，按英語的翻譯考問自己。在你走過這些步之后，將卡片翻過來，并且再次通過它們。遵照這樣的模式，永遠困在你手上的卡片可能會越少。一旦你覺得你很好理解了這 5 張卡片，就把它們擱在一邊并且抓取另外 5 張卡片。重復這個同樣的過程，然后將新的 5 張卡片添加你放在一邊的那堆之中，洗卡片，并且它們全部通過。堅持這樣做，直到你征服整堆的卡片。隨著你的進步，你會不斷增強對這些詞的記憶，讓人感覺你不可能忘掉它們。

    你的語言學習的一個較小部分應該是致力掌握一些基本的語法。如果你在上大學時學習過語言，這可能是你的工作的主要部分。然而，令人欣慰的是，你幾乎不需要對它那么擔心，因為你需要的只是建立基本的溝通技巧。語言因它們語法的復雜性而顯著變化，這意味著某些內容會比其他的內容難學得多。但是，你必須確保你知道一些基本的語序。在英語中，一個句子的主語（主題）在動詞之前，而賓語（對象）在動詞之后。如果我說："I kicked the ball（我踢球）", "I（我）"是主語， kicked （踢了）（或"to kick（踢）"）是動詞， the ball（球）是賓語。盡管一些語言所作的是一些對于這個順序有趣的事情。日語是主語-賓語-動詞，這意味著動作來到了句子的最末端。而斯拉夫語言，例如俄語，則完全沒有任何固定的順序，這使得事情大大復雜化。在不帶語序的語言中，名詞必須根據它們在句子里的功能變化。這被稱為語法上的格，而且盡管它是學習這種語言的很大的一部分，它也不是有心讓你發暈。因為這個原因，你大概可以暫時忽略它。

    像語法一樣，對于不同的語言，書寫也是非常困難的工作。例如，漢語具有相當簡單的語法，這可能是一個解脫。但是，它的書面語言使用數千個不同的字，每一個字代表一個詞或者一個詞的一部分。要熟記許多這樣的字是一項你必須自己作出決定你是否想要承擔的任務。然而，如果你正在學習一種使用拉丁字母表的語言，你實在應該努力學會如何發音每個字母。通常，字母的發音不同于該字母在英語中的發音，它們通常都只有一個聲音。英語在這里是古怪的，我們有 5 個元音字母以及大約 12 個元音。西班牙語、捷克語、德語等…則一致得多，這意味著它們的字母表使得該語言學起來更容易。當然，外邊還有許多其它的系統。阿拉伯語和希伯來語一般只寫輔音，日語有每個音節所用的符號（總共大約 50 個）,加上代表單詞的特殊日本漢字。但是請記住，你在這里的任務只是要學習到足以讀取街面的標志和超市的標簽即可。

    如果你在旅行之前已經努力掌握了一些語言，你在你的目的地會得到更好地接待。每個地方的當地人都喜歡知道你作出了努力去講一些他們的語言。最重要的是，學習一種新的語言能以一種沒有別的東西能夠做到的方式來擴展你的頭腦。你絕不知道你獲得的知識在什么時候可以派上用場。