This is only a test...

This is just a test of posting in two languages at the same time. This is only a test. *beep*

mi lukin taso e nasin e sitelen pi toki tu. mi lukin taso. mu *pipipi*

When something is too good to be true...

When we travel, we want to talk to people from other places. But as we know, it is not always easy, which can be frustrating. Although everybody assumes English. In reality, it is spoken only where the tourists go. This means that you have to pay a premium for the privilege to be understood.

I am native Spanish and fluent English speaker (otherwise, you would have been lost already) which allows me to travel pretty much through the whole American continent without communications issues. I know a bit of French, which is spoken in the Caribbean, which pretty much covers the Americas.

Now, if I go to Asia or the Eastern Europe, I can honestly say that I am up the creek without a paddle. Probably forced to pantomime to get myself sort of understood.

In my fools errand of learning quirky languages that few people speak, I discovered a movement to create a Pan-Slavic language. That came with a slew of languages of different complexities and philosophies, all claiming the same thing.

Learn this one once and be understood throughout the Slavic speaking world!

Really?

Let's see... I am having a hard time to come to grasp with that claim. If experience serves me well, the only way I was able to be understood in Brazil was talking like Tarzan.

Me hungry, me eat, like chicken...

Portuguese and Spanish are the two most closely related of the Latin languages, and I had a hard time getting by with the locals. I can only read French because spoken will get me lost due to its enunciation. I can get Italian sort of ok, but differences will throw me off for good chunks of the conversation.

Romanian? Well, when I was there the kid was asking what type of service I needed and took me a good 15 minutes to realize that cabina meant the toilet enclosure.

This, comes back to a single language to rule them all. What I can do is spent time learning one of the simplified ones and try it with my coworkers that are native speakers of Slavic based languages and see if the message goes through.

... or not.