Travelers Today – Pamela Llamedo
“Speaking the language gives you an instant ‘local’s pass’, opening up places you never would be able to get to with English alone. The Huffingtonpost.com.au says, it’s not an easy process, but when you travel with a language, you get your reward in surprised smiles and invitations to have beers and meet families. Queensland University of Technology lecturer in Chinese Ingrid Wang said a bit of language made travel more fun. “Language does give you confidence to make you travel more enjoyable because you can feel free from fears,” Wang said. “Otherwise you fear things could happen to you and you don’t have the language to understand.” She said Australians sometimes needed extra impetus to learn a language. “English is the universal language. In China, if you want to go anywhere academically, you need to know one or two or even three foreign languages.”(more)