I've been thinking about picking up another language for some time, but I'm absolutely terrible at it, because I always forget words and proper grammar in the language, which always takes a while to understand anyway, because I really svck at comprehending other languages.

Which got me thinking: How exactly did our ancestors learn other languages? In an exploratory way, I mean, like discovering a civilization for the first time that spoke a foreign language and were quite hostile to the intruders due to lack of understanding them mixed in with fear.

I know this is probably just me being an idiot, but I really cannot understand how someone could learn to communicate with someone that speaks exclusively in a different language, just by listening to them speak for a while. Whenever I attempt this, it sounds like gibberish with a meaning that I cannot understand due to ignorance.

And after that, how did these linguistic pioneers properly record the translations? Different languages have different phonetics, right? So how would they have correctly established a way of conveying to the simple-minded population of their home country the spelling, grammar and pronunciation of a different language? And likewise for the other people? I'm thinking the answer to that is that they didn't find a way for idiots to understand, because here I am, rambling about how I'm so confused with all this.

Basically, TL:DR, how do people learn and communicate another language, and educate how to communicate in this language to dumb people?

Usually, explorers for the first and subsequent times of traveling to an area had a guide who would be patient with them in trying to bridge the gap with gestures and then eventually each becoming possibly more mutually intelligible. Most people cn begin picking out patterns in a language with someone showing you for long enough. If you went to a Spanish speaking country, you'd probably eventually pick up that "pan" is bread and then begin learning some phrases you have noticed spoken around the purchase or baking of it. It'd definitely take some time; that's for sure.

My aunt learned English by working as a bag girl at a supermarket for 18 months. She just listened to customers talk around her and then began experimenting with the patterns she noticed of when phrases or words were used, and now has an amazing command of English (especially sarcasm, haha), even moreso than my other aunt who has a degree in English but can't speak it worth crap.

A lot of times, explorers or people documenting the language (especially when considering most explorers ended up conquering other nations and tribes) would document the language using their own frame of reference--their own alphabet. That's in cases where that language was even cared enough about to be preserved in the first place, rather than replaced completely or dominated by the invading language.

And in the case of even yet other places with longstanding trading going on, pidgin languages were created, which used basic components of each trading language (mainly subject based) to facilitate that relationship with each party only having to pick up the parts of the other language being used. Sometimes, those pidgin languages would become more complex and become actual languages (rather than communication methods), which are generally called or suffixed as creoles.

Or they just slaughtered the natives and imposed their own language, learning be damned.