h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Just ask. Sounds easy, but is it?

Firstly there's the problem of language. English people, and maybe English speaking people, are famous for not speaking foreign languages. But, even if you've mastered French or German, what about Serbo-Croat, or Swahili?

And what about written material? It's not that difficult in the age of the internet, to find out facts. Like - What age do French pupils transfer to the lycee? But, unless you can indeed find a suitable person to talk to, the question 'What's it like being an English pupil in a French lycee?' is more difficult.

I can think of a couple of answers to that.

1. How do you communicate when you don't speak the same language? You might be surprised. When I taught ESL, I often didn't speak the languages of my students. There are ways to simplify communications and get on the same wavelength. Hands and feet, as they say, props, pad and pencil...

People sometimes asked me to talk to foreigners, even though I didn't speak Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian, whatever. Not one word. But we'd manage, and the others wouldn't. I think the question is, 'How flexible are you?'

2. How about that internet? There are fora all over it. Most of the people on there write English. They might not be able to speak it, but they can write it, because they use computers. There are a lot of these fora where you can ask questions - and get answers.

Here's an example, plucked almost at random:

http://www.expat-blog.com/forum/viewforum.php?id=358

Notice that people can ask questions here like 'what's the best brand of sour cream in a Bucharest supermarket?' And get responses. Now, what if you wanted to know that for a story?

Now, this is just ex-pats in Romania. But there's lots on the web. Also: these days, most everybody has an English-language newspaper online. The wonderfully quirky 'Athens News' is online these days. And it's almost as much fun as the old rag used to be.

Lots of resources.

Thanks, Dmitri. Some of these resources might be useful to me.

I love to 'travel' by reading local papers. It's so much fun to imagine what's going on somewhere else.

Maybe we'll find out what the neighbours are doing on Mars. The rover Curiosity is tweeting now...

oh Dmitri, that post gave me a right belly laugh, thank you

Thanks, Peanut.