This might be a dumb question but i’ve always wondered since they had never encountered people who spoke a completely new language they’d never heard, how did they communicate?
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ELI5:
You ever play charades with your friends, and guess what the word is by acting it out? If you and your friends played a lot of charades you’d eventually learn a WHOLE bunch of words.
Non ELI5:
I moved to France when I was 18, having never studied French. Initially my vocabulary peaked when I’d just hold objects up to people and they’d tell me what it was. I learned the phrase ‘what is this” pretty early on to aid in it.
I remember learning how to say “I am hot” and then “I am cold” and now I could express feelings not just objects.
Then I learned to ask basic questions like “I’m hungry” translated to “are you hungry?” to see if my friends wanted to eat.
Now I can ask about you in a basic sense… and it just grew from there. I remember when I got to the point I could carry on simplistic conversations and was excited to talk to people and I’d learn more questions and phrases from each interaction.
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