Anyone who’s tried to learn a little bit of the local language before going on vacation will probably know the feeling. You’ve brushed up on your vocab and done a few online exercises, but the moment you’re actually in conversation with someone, or trying to order a meal at a restaurant, all that homework goes right out of your head. Often, you end up feeling more than a little embarrassed, and have to resort to the old fallback of speaking in English.
If that’s a familiar feeling, don’t worry—you’re not alone. Foreign language anxiety, or FLA, is a linguistics term that describes the unease, apprehension, or even panic that some feel when learning or attempting to speak another language. Whether it manifests in the classroom—with language learners not wanting to make fools of themselves in front of their fellow classmates—or in a busy restaurant or hotel reception, this kind of anxiety (also known as xenoglossophobia) is no laughing matter.
And now, language learning website Preply has conducted a fascinating new survey to find out which languages American tourists are the most intimidated to try in their local countries.
America’s Attitudes About Learning (Or Not Learning!) a Foreign Language
The survey’s authors quizzed more than 1500 American people on their attitudes towards travel, language learning, and overseas language use.
A little under two-fifths of all the respondents said that they planned to take a vacation abroad sometime in the coming year—but nearly a third also admitted to choosing a destination where English is already widely spoken, showing just how much of a stumbling block foreign language anxiety can be.
The survey also found that while 80 percent of people know that learning a few local words and phrases before going abroad is worthwhile, only 58 percent of them actually make an attempt to do so. What’s more, only a quarter of people start learning well in advance, while two-fifths admitted to doing all their learning last minute (including on the airplane!).
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The Most Common Reasons Americans Don’t Learn the Local Language Before Traveling
The Preply survey also asked people what they thought the biggest language barriers are when it came to learning a language ahead of a vacation.
A little over a third of the respondents (37 percent) cited difficulty as their main stumbling block. Thirty-five percent relied on the assumption that English would be usable in their destination regardless. And 33 percent assumed that their own language-learning ability wouldn’t be good enough to allow them to learn enough of a new language to get by.
Other frequently cited reasons included:
- lack of time
- a reliance on translation apps
- a reliance on travel companions and other people to speak the local language instead
Twenty-four percent of respondents, meanwhile, reported that a feeling of embarrassment had held them back from trying to speak the local language, showing that foreign language anxiety is a real issue.
The Most Mortifying Language Faux Pas Committed by Americans (According to Americans)
As far as language gaffes go, the survey found that the most cringeworthy faux pas people experienced while on holiday was pointing at a menu to avoid using local words altogether—something 35 percent of people in the survey picked up on. Surprisingly, it beat pronunciation errors into second place, with 32 percent of people admitting to those.
Other errors and embarrassing admissions the survey uncovered included people rehearsing what they want to say (25 percent), speaking English slowly and loudly (23 percent), and even staying in familiar places to avoid encountering people who don’t speak English (17 percent). Proving that there might still be a desire to learn or use a little bit of the local lingo despite the difficulty, however, more than a quarter (26 percent) of people in the survey claimed that they felt guilty when they had to resort to using English.
The Countries Where Americans Are Most Intimidated to Speak the Language, Mapped
Intriguingly, though, the survey found that foreign language anxiety was not the same in every vacation destination. Some countries and languages proved more intimidating than others, with China topping the list of places where the language barrier seemed the biggest.
In fact, almost the entire top five—China (37 percent), Japan (34 percent), South Korea (23 percent), Thailand (13 percent), and India (12 percent)—was made up of countries whose local languages do not use English script. Greece and its Greek alphabet ranked in ninth place, with 6 percent, while Morocco—where both Arabic and Berber are in use—was in 10th, with 5 percent.
The remainder of the top 10 was made up of countries where, although the language might be unfamiliar, the words themselves are at least written in a familiar a to z. French was the highest-ranking of these languages, with France tying with Thailand in fourth place overall, and 13 percent of respondents claiming that they would feel intimidated to try to speak French there. Italy (9 percent) followed closely behind in sixth place, with Spanish-speaking Mexico (8 percent) and Spain (7 percent) making up the rest of the top 10.