You don't know a word of Chinese, Greek, Latin, French, German, Malay, Russian or Swahili? Yes, you do know one word.

😕
Problem
Foreign languages seem so difficult. The hardest part is starting. You don't know a single word. They say a journey begins with the first step. (This saying is attributed to Chinese Confucius and several other VIPs from history.)

If you speak English, or any language you probably know a lot of words of other languages. You know a word or two, probably compound words, which means you know one to four words.

You also know a few near universal words. Hotel, coffee and taxi. My goodness - you will soon become a keen polyglot (speaker of several languages).
😲

Bulgarian
ciao - goodbye (from Italy)
😲

Chinese
Beijing bei-north ching-capital 
"which means "Northern Capital" (from the Chinese characters 北 for north and 京 for capital),"
The single Chinese character abbreviation for Beijing is 京, which appears on automobile license plates in the city. (From the handy Wikipedia article on Beijing.)
Listen to the sound on Wikipedia and you will hear the second syllable ching is pronounced high, like the ching of a cash register. Easy to follow and remember. You now already know and understand two of the Chinese tones. 

French
merci - thank you
rouge - red (Moulin rouge is red windmill. That reminds you and me that in French the adjective or description is second, after the noun or naming word.)
The French also have Franglais words and phrases, such as Le Weekend, the weekend.

German
kindergarden
kinder - child
garten - garden
Now you can look for or ask for a child or a garden.

Greek
In England we like to say, 'It's all Greek to me'. That's because the Greek alphabet looks so different. However, we use many Greek words. Greek letters are used as symbols in mathematics.
Acropolis - building on the head or hilltop of the city. Politics - governing a city.

✡️
Hebrew
Even if you don't know the Hebrew alphabet, you know the word bet, which is the letter B in Hebrew. The first two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, the letters A and B in Hebrew, are pronounced: Aleph, Bet.
ℶ

Bethlehem (Bethlehem means house of bread or bakery. Beth or Beit, sometimes pronounced 'buy-it' , is building. Lehem is bread. Now at least you can look for or ask for bread.)
cherubim (In Hebrew plurals are im.)
Mazel Tov! Good luck, actually luck good, with the adjective second.
Kosher - meaning food, but nowadays used in English as a metaphor, anything proper or right.

Italian
ciao - goodbye
This word is used in neighbouring Romania, a country whose name comes from next door neighbours, the Romans. The Romans used to be here (Romania), there (Rome in Italy) and everywhere.

Japanese
Haiku. (Poetry form.)
Sayonara. (Goodbye!)

Latin
Latin words are used for plants.
Plebs - ordinary people, not the elite.
Ager - field, gives us agriculture.
Hortus - garden, gives us horticulture.
I could never remember which was which, until I learned Latin at Grammar School.
From the Romans we get Roman numerals used in clocks and watches.
In the chart below the third row down is the Roman numerals one to ten..

Malay
orang utan
orang - person



Portuguese
flamingo
Bom - good (as in placename Bombay, good bay)









Romanian
mersi - thank you (from the French merci)
ciao from Italy.

Singapore's Singlish
Simple English, English vocabulary, translating from Chinese (Mandarin) or other Chinese dialects. Chinese has no past nor future tense, no a or the, and no he, she or it. Verbs are without subjects; the subject is implied by the context.
Long time no see. (I haven't seen you for ages.)
Can (Or, 'Can, can! This means I can.)
No more already. (Sorry, Madam, we are out of stock of this item.)

Spanish
sombrero - large hat
Now you can go into a hat shop or clothes shop in Spain or another Spanish speaking country (or an English speaking country) and point to your head or the back of the shop and raise your eyebrows and ask for, 'Sombrero?' A smart salesman, or a dim-witted one, will offer you a baseball cap instead, which is probably what you wanted anyway.

Swahili
safari - journey

Adios. Bye!

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. See my other posts on learning languages, including esperanto a made up international language. Please share links to your favourite posts. If you would like an entertaining speech or workshop for a college. club or business, please get in touch.💑