Tour guide and Language

Tour guide is one of the enjoyable career options for a linguist.  It is related to tourism and it is one of the growing industries. People are interested to explore the different parts of the word. The tour guide can enjoy the company of foreigners and guide them about certain location and tell them all the information about the places where visitors want to visit and he/she has to answer all the queries related to the location.

The tourism sector is increasing day by day as the people are interested in visiting the new places and tourist places are increasing every day. It has created a very vast scope for linguists and language professionals. It is one of the best opportunities for language learners to explore the world while earning a handsome amount.  

The ministry of tourism focusing on providing training for tour guides, an individual can be a tour guide by acquiring some basic knowledge about the places and locations where visitors want to go and explore that. An individual can also get himself/herself registered as a tour guide.

A tour guide is a person who leads and guides the tourist or the tour group during the travel and the tourist trip of any kind. A tour guide can be defined in general terms as the person who accompanies tourists, visitors, and foreign delegations to cities, regions, monuments, facilities and tourist, historical and archaeological sites, provides them with the necessary information about them, responds to their inquiries with accurate, correct and objective information and avoids additions, opinions, comments and personal opinions, and staying with them and accompanying them from the date of their arrival until their departure.

The role of the tourist guide acquires prominent importance in the success of the tourist trip and giving it a cultural character based on knowledge, information, and facts that enrich the memory of the tourist and his general culture, thus forming a complete picture that combines live scenes with documented and correct information that helps to consolidate them in the imagination. The task of a tour guide is not limited to accompanying tourists, guiding them to important tourist places, archaeological and historical monuments, museums, and giving them information about them, because it contributes to a large degree in giving a negative or positive image of his/her country.

One of the obstacles mentioned in the job of a tour guide from the reality of practice in the field is that it requires the presence of employees who view their work as professions that need a lot of development, knowledge, and many personal skills. The role of tour guide gain impotence when the teaching and learning of foreign languages ​​developed and spread after World War II, and tourism became a profitable and organized economic activity, languages ​​acquired the status of a “tourist language” such as English in various parts of the world, Spanish in the Iberian Peninsula, Latin America, Chinese and Japanese in Southeast Asia, and French in Francophone countries such as Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, and other African countries.

Language plays an important and central role in tour guides; no one can guide any tourist without knowing the language of the tourist. A linguist can use the tour guide as a career option. A tour guide must have a good command of spoken language and culture and information about historical and tourist palaces. After acquiring all necessary information a linguist can use it as a career option.