There are plenty of reasons to learn a foreign language before you travel. Perhaps you’re venturing beyond major tourist centers, or you want to be prepared for emergencies. Whatever the reason, speaking even a few words of the local language with residents can quickly elevate you from mere tourist to sympathetic traveler.

“This tiny interaction instantly connects you,” said Mary Green, vice president and executive editor of Pimsleur Language Programs, in an email. “That’s the feeling travelers are chasing. You’re not just passing through, but actually engaging and connecting.”

Fortunately, there are lots of ways to learn languages, and getting started is affordable, or even free.

Start simply and build from there

Aim to reach a “survival level” before you travel. That means abandoning your inhibitions and not getting hung up on grammar or achieving proficiency, said Thomas Sauer, assistant director of resource development for the National Foreign Language Center at the University of Maryland. Travelers can connect and communicate surprisingly well at this level, which he described as a speaking style, akin to that of a toddler, that gets the point across.

For Brandon Shaw, a co-owner of the Tour Guy, a company providing specialized tours in Europe and North America, reaching survival level means focusing on a core of essential verbs (words like “go,” “see,” “eat,” “drink,” “have,” “do” and “be”), then learning a small vocabulary of other words centered on your particular interests for a given trip.

“Then you can literally build a hundred sentences around that,” Mr. Shaw said.

Learning those “right words” doesn’t happen overnight. Getting beyond the transactional tourist tropes of “Where’s the bathroom?” and “Check, please,” for example, can take anywhere from one to three months of daily practice, although everyone learns differently. As with a fitness program, you get out of language study what you put in. The trick is finding what works for you.