Do you really want to immerse yourself in a foreign language but travelling and being ‘location-independent’ isn’t a viable option for you right now?

A lot of people who check out language learning blogs and forums for advice aren’t really able to travel around on a whim to learn languages due to work and family commitments. Just about anybody who lives in a foreign language context is bound to pick up a decent amount of the language with a little motivation, but doing the same thing in your own country is where the real challenge is.

I’ve noticed a fairly high level of frustration from people on the popular language blogs and forums who don’t have the luxury of being able to jump on a plane and live the life of a polyglot adventurer.

You don’t need to travel to meet people

You’d be surprised just how many people from your target language community live in or near your own city (especially if you’re from the US, Australia, Canada or Europe).

When I started teaching myself Spanish a few years ago I was introduced to a retired Mexican military officer who’d recently migrated to Australia and we used to spend hours speaking Spanish and drinking pineapple beer in his lounge room.

A similar thing happened to me when I started out with Arabic. I met a Palestinian guy who used to invite me over for cups of tea while he taught me to speak his dialect and read.

Through these guys I was connected to their communities and invited to social events, made life-long friends and received invitations to travel to their home countries. Most importantly I was immersed in my target language without ever having to globe-trot.

How to get connected to your target language community

• Check out classified sites like Gumtree (UK, Australia, NZ, South Africa), Kijiji or eBay Classifieds (US and Canada) and look for language swapping. There are often loads of foreign students needing language help in your area who are eager to meet up with you and exchange languages for free.
• In addition to this you can use community notice boards on university campuses to advertise yourself as a language swap partner or ESL tutor.
• Join ethnic/cultural clubs. Most of the major migrant communities in my city have a social club for their own people, but they’re usually open to everybody from the public.The German Club in Brisbane is very popular for example. A simple Google or Yellowpages search for clubs in your town should help you find them. Call them up and see what events are coming up or if they can help you find teachers.
• Attend ethnic churches/mosques/temples. When I started learning Arabic I used to attend an Eastern Orthodox church and listen to the liturgy, songs and prayers in Arabic even though I didn’t understand anything at the time. I built strong friendships and picked up a lot of language by getting involved. I also used to go for free lunch at the local Buddhist temple with my Mandarin teacher and met a lot of the local Chinese community.
• Restaurant and shop owners. If you’re like me and can spark up a conversation with anybody, go down to your local Italian/Chinese/Thai/whatever restaurant and test out your language on the people who work there. Do what I do and ask them if they know anybody in their community who’d be willing to help you learn. I’ve made good friends and language exchange partners by doing this (recently I was lucky enough to find a Tigrinyan language teacher through a local Ethiopian restaurant owner).
• Host CouchSurfers. I’ve done this once before and it was a great way to meet some French speakers. Just be careful who you let in your house.

This was written by Donovan Nagel.

Visit The Mezzofanti Guild for more posts like this.