This may sound like a strange question but when the Europeans first made contact with the Native Americans how did they communicate if neither spoke each others language and how did the Europeans learn the language of the natives when there was no easy way of translating and vice versa?
Just like learning any language. They used signs, built a common vocabulary of nouns, simple verbs, etc.
In some cases, immersion produced the first translators. For example, during the conquest of Mexico there were two translators Geronimo de Aguilar and doña Marina (la Malinche/Malintzin). When Cortes stopped at the island of Cozumel, he found two shipwrecked Spaniards, Geronimo de Aguilar and Gonzalo Guerrero. Both men had learned Maya through immersion. Gonzalo Guerrero had actually 'gone native' and did not join Cortes, Aguilar did and became the expeditions first translator. Later, while stopping along the coast of the Yucatan, Cortes acquired his second translator, doña Marina, she had been born in the Aztec Empire making her native language Nahuatl, but had lived among the Maya for many years. Between Aguilar and doña Marina, Cortes could translate between Spanish and Maya and Spanish-Nahuatl (through Maya). Eventually, doña Marina learned Spanish and Aguilar became unnecessary.
Also, in Spanish America, native peoples always outnumbered Spaniards or American-born Spaniards which made native languages very common even in Spanish cities. Even in Spanish homes, indigenous languages would have been spoken by the servants, and many Spaniards would have likely had at least some basic understanding of the local indigenous language, in order to shop in the market (a typically indigenous space), communicate with servants or day laborers, to conduct business (indians represented the largest demographic), etc.
Just to throw out a source, in the 1530s Bartolomé de las Casas, an early Spanish emigrant to the Caribbean transcribed much of Christopher Colombus' diary, and you can read how during his initial contacts there was trading and presumably a lot of pointing and gesturing.
As soon as dawn broke many of these people came to the beach... They brought skeins of cotton thread, parrots, darts, and other small things which it would be tedious to recount, and they give all in exchange for anything that may be given to them. I was attentive, and took trouble to ascertain if there was gold. I saw that some of them had a small piece fastened in a hole they have in the nose, and by signs I was able to make out that to the south, or going from the island to the south, there was a king who had great cups full, and who possessed a great quantity. I tried to get them to go there, but afterwards I saw that they had no inclination.
...These islands are very green and fertile, the climate very mild. They may contain many things of which I have no knowledge, for I do not wish to stop, in discovering and visiting many islands, to find gold. These people make signs that it is worn on the arms and legs; and it must be gold, for they point to some pieces that I have.
This journal is also where western history's first instance of the written word 'Canoe' comes from (well, spelled 'canoa' in the original), which they picked up from Taíno.
For several of the first interactions between Europeans and the Indigenous Americans, the Europeans captured children or young adults to be converted and trained to translate their language into Spanish. The first Pizarro expedition into Peru accomplished this. Once you captured a child, raised them in the faith and taught them Spanish, they could be useful in getting other individuals to convert and help your cause.
They did this in Spanish Florida as well. J. Michael Francis has studied the Guale and Timucua peoples and the Spanish regularly used captive children as translators before returning them to their homes where they would hopefully make conversion easier and assist the Spanish with their political and economic agendas.
When Karlsefni was in the Vinland settlement, the trading kind of spoke for itself. Nobody spoke the language, but when the skraelings tried milk for the first time, they went absolutely nuts over it. Before the fighting broke out, the natives would throw furs over the palisade and Karlsefni's companions would go out with milk (he wouldn't allow anything else to be given). Source: Vinland Sagas
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