Traveling to a foreign country and don’t know the language? No problem! Thanks to the BBC, you can take a crash course in the essential phrases of 36 different languages. So whether you’re rubbing elbows with Chinese businessmen on a work trip or trying to impress your significant other on a weekend getaway to Spain, you’ll be able to practice the basics of the language—enough to make you not look like a haughty tourist—and navigate your way around a foreign city.
From Albanian to Ukrainian, and many languages in between, the BBC’s Quick Fix site offers printable phrase sheets and audio pronunciation guides that you can download as MP3s. (You can also just study off the Web site.) Learn how to say “Do you speak English” in Norwegian (Snakker du engelsk), “red wine” in Italian (il vino rosso), “goodbye” in Polish (Do widzenia) or “where is the swimming pool, please?” in French (Où est la piscine, s‘il vous plait?).
If I had known such a resource existed, I probably wouldn’t have been wandering aimlessly through the streets of Paris looking for a public restroom and kicking myself for having opted to take Spanish instead of French in high school.
Visit www.bbc.co.uk/languages/other/quickfix to brush up on your language skills today.
