Fortunately for travelers, finding a way to stay fed is usually one of the easier things to do in another country. If one has a lot of very special dietary needs, like no meat and no gluten, then a fairly elementary command of the local language is a very good idea. But for someone who can usually get by and stay happy by ordering things by pointing at the menu, it’s not altogether necessary to be working toward fluency. There are more benefits, however, when someone decides to learn Spanish and immerse in another culture, that go far past the food and drink issue, but food and drink is certainly where most people start to find ways of living in another tongue.

It’s interesting to discover, for example, that in a lot of places fish or chicken aren’t considered meat. If one doesn’t have the language, this is enough of a reason to get to learn the subtleties, so that there are different ways of speaking about the same thing whenever there’s a tight spot. But it’s much more interesting to have the language well enough to ask more fascinating questions about the food. That can reveal an awful lot about the local culture .

The very good thing here, then, when it comes to coffee and international coffee culture, is that it’s pretty easy to find a way of procuring an espresso in just about any language. As long as the machinery is there in the shop, there is a way of explaining with hand gestures alone. However, to really get into the local scene, some fluency is required. Language as it’s spoken on the street level is always so very different than what can be learned in books.

Asking the barrista how they make a cappuccino can be revelatory in many different ways. For one thing, one will probably learn a lot about the art of making coffee in general, as well as a few new variations. But more profoundly, this is the kind of daily activity that warrants descriptions that take language down to its most basic form. The simplest of words, like “put,” “make,” and “do,” reveal themselves in all their complexities, and these are the moments that can transform one’s language learning to a whole new level. Coffee naturally stimulates conversations, but when these same conversations start to happen in another language, it can feel as though a new kind of mental energy is waking up, and that could very well be the case.