Travel & Holidays

Why souvenir sellers in tourist facilities speak many languages

Mastering multiple languages ​​could also be a dream for many individuals because we will gain many advantages from it. However, we must admit that learning one other language is difficult. We not only have to memorize the vocabulary, but in addition understand the grammar. For many languages, the grammar could also be just like English grammar, where the verb might be placed after the topic, but in some languages, similar to Turkish or Korean, the verb is placed within the last sentence.

We can see many videos on social media showing how children selling souvenirs at tourist attractions can speak multiple languages. Most of those children don’t go to colleges where they learn foreign languages.

In the video above, you’ll be able to see a Cambodian boy souvenir seller who speaks over 10 languages ​​including Japanese, Thai and Mandarin with good pronunciation. In Bali, Indonesia, there’s a lady, Ni Putu Rista, who works as a postcard seller and, surprisingly, speaks 23 languages. At this point many individuals will think, “but they can only talk about selling souvenirs, not fully understanding the language, right?”.

Yes, perhaps they will only speak for his or her purpose (selling postcards and souvenirs). However, let’s listen to 1 thing – they’ve a powerful will and desire to learn foreign languages. For example, in Mandarin and Thai languages, we want to regulate the pronunciation appropriately because if we use a unique tone, it can have a unique meaning.

Ni Putu Rista (Source: CNN Indonesia)

Those who’ve already learned foreign languages ​​which might be far more different from their native language will agree on one thing: “It is difficult”. To start, they’ll learn the right way to greet, introduce themselves and remember numbers. I used to be already learning Turkish because I’m studying in Turkey and I discovered that memorizing all of the dictionaries and proper grammar when speaking takes greater than just effort and willingness.

But these amazing kids learned languages ​​through the self-taught method. Therefore, they should learn it to impress guests from different countries. They practice this each day to enhance their understanding of languages. They could have faced difficulties in the training process in some unspecified time in the future, but they’ll eventually succeed.

From my personal experience, once I was in Istanbul visiting the Basilica Cistern, I met a Syrian man offering me a photograph in a photograph booth. What impressed me was the undeniable fact that this Syrian speaks not only Turkish, but in addition Russian, Mandarin, English and Japanese. I had a pleasant conversation with this guy and asked why he learned multiple languages. It’s a straightforward answer “Because I even have to” he said to me.

In summary, the necessity to sell a product to earn cash and survive, combined with the strong will to learn multiple languages ​​and the quantity of practice they gained, made them in a position to speak foreign languages. Imagine that if we’ve the identical strong will to live, we can even gain many advantages by speaking multiple languages.

admin
the authoradmin

Leave a Reply