HOW CAN WE EXCHANGE HOMES IF WE CAN'T SPEAK THE LANGUAGE?

Our kids are playing "school" and apparently it's nap time. They lie down foot to foot. "Shway jao!" My son orders his sister.

I can tell he is speaking the Chinese he learned in his bilingual nursery school but I have no idea what he said. "What does "shway jao" mean?"

The answer is rather obvious: "It means 'go to sleep', Mama".

If only adults could learn a language by just hanging out with native-speakers a few hours each day. That's how my son did it. His nursery school classroom has an English-speaking teacher and a Mandarin-speaking aide. The kids in his classroom started the year speaking only English or Korean, Spanish or a Chinese dialect. The teachers read them stories, led circle-time or offered them lunch choices in Chinese. By the end of the year they were bossing each other around in Mandarin.

Neurologists tell us that language-learning is a slow and inherently incomplete process for adults. Where does that leave a home exchanger hoping to connect -- and swap accommodations -- with peers who speak a different language?

Reader Kate is running into exactly that problem:

"Hi Nicole, ages ago you did a couple of posts on language difficulties. It wasn't relevant to me then but now I would very much like to get in contact with a Spanish family. Their languages are Spanish and Italian. Ours are English and French.

"I thinking of imposing on one of my colleagues to give me a hand drafting them a brief email (I have already arranged to take Spanish at evening classes in the Autumn but it'll take some time for me to get beyond my current holiday basics) but it could get a little burdensome for her if they're interested. How would you tackle this conundrum or should we just pass?"

Kate, please don't pass up this opportunity! You are a home exchanger, woman. Resourceful, adventurous, up to the challenge. But you need some resources. Here are some suggestions about communication when you don't share a language with a potential swap partner.

USE YOUR WORDS

When you write to an exchange family in another country, it's alright to send an offer in your primary language. The exchangers may be too modest to say they speak your language, but they may be able to get the gist of a written message. Alternately, they may have a friend who can translate. But don't stop there.

USE OUR WORDS

If your native language is not English but you speak it, consider sending a second version of the offer in English, within the original email. I am not an English-language supremacist. I speak several languages other than English and do not understand why the vast majority of Americans are monolingual. But the fact is that these days English is quickly becoming the international language. You and your swap partners (or their friends) may be able to communicate in English even if it not the primary language for either of you.

USE THEIR WORDS

If you and the swappers don't have any language in common, you may still be able to get along in another foreign language. Kate mentions that she speaks French but the swappers speak Spanish and Italian. As someone who speaks Spanish and French, I know that I can get the gist of messages written to me in Italian. When I find a phrase that I do not understand, I have a secret weapon. Let's make Kate wait to find out what it is until next time.


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MONTREAL HOME EXCHANGE BY BIKE

A great thing about home exchange is the access to sports equipment one's exchange partners often provide. The Montreal swap family sent us an email before they left inviting us to use their two bicycles. Of course we would not have touched them had they not offered in advance. Just because an exchanger leaves something in her own house doesn't mean the swappers who stay there are free to use it. In fact, I read one article about home exchange where a guy said "I'm not above wearing the exchangers' shirts." That is one dude who should stick to hotels.

In this case, we were happy to have permission to use the exchangers' bikes. Montreal has miles and miles -- well, actually kilometers and kilometers -- of off-street bike routes. In fact, Quebec has thousands of kilometers of bicycle touring routes, known as the Route Verte.

Before heading to the Canal path we stopped at the Maison de Velo. This amazing cafe-bookstore-travel agency is the headquarters of the Quebec bike route planners. They publish dozens of books on bike routes across Quebec and Canada. Helmeted riders parked their bikes in the plentiful racks and relaxed with a coffee and snack. We picked up a detailed map of all the local bike paths, as well as an English guide to the Route Verte network, which now extends into the province of Ontario.

Wheeling through Old Montreal towards the port we were thrilled to see courteous drivers give way to riders on the well-marked bike lanes. We passed art cars with air conditioners mounted to their passenger windows -- part of the Just for Laughs festival currently going on.

Crossing the Jaques Cartier bridge was challenging, especially while pulling two children in a bike trailer. We had to stop when the bike lane narrowed to avoid hitting what looked like a tiny beaver munching the greenery beside the path. We asked the next cyclist what this creature was called and were told it was a marmot. I had never heard of this so I asked the following rider what the animal is called in English. "Marmot" came the reply.

It was cute as could be, but didn't look especially non-rabid, so we gave it as wide a berth as possible and kept rolling. Later I discovered that marmots -- not rats -- are now considered by historians to be the animal responsible for spreading the bubonic plague, so it's just as well we treated it with care.

TO BE CONTINUED...

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HOME EXCHANGE MEMORIES

Returning to an exchange home you've used before is such a comfortable feeling. You have already figured our where to find things and how to work around the home's peculiarities. This particular home was our son's third swap when he was an infant. We have tried to recreate some of the snap-shots we took on that first trip to highlight how he has grown, from a tiny baby, asleep in many of the original images, to a tall boy about to enter elementary school.

Montreal is seducing me again. I love the historic Old Port area where our last home exchange house was located, but the same issues that apply to any tourist area make Vieux Montreal a harder place to swap homes than the Plateau, where we are now.

The older homes in the historic port have no garages, and on-street parking is impossible. Granted, I like to drive here then never touch the car again until it is time to leave, but if you swap in an area mobbed by tourists, you may have to walk a mile to get something from your vehicle, as I did several times during that swap.

Here in the more residential, but still interesting, Plateau the exchangers have a garage. Their car is parked there, but that is just as well: it is the tightest garage entrance I have ever seen. But with the exception of one hour spent sitting in my car around the corner during the weekly street cleaning hour, I have had a spot just outside the exchangers' living room window since arriving.

Which leads me to the next installment in free home exchange travel: intermodal transportation methods. Stay tuned...

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