How to Point in 73 Different Languages

Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 01.07.02 | 2:42 AM ET

San Francisco Chronicle columnist John Flinn has a problem with those guidebooks filled with cartoon representations of hamburgers and hospitals and such, thus reducing international encounters to point-and-smile moments void of any embarrassing (or meaningful) interaction. “I loathe these booklets,” he writes. “My idea of interacting with people and making new friends is not pointing at little cartoon images of things I expect them to fetch for me.”