Today, we take for granted the fact that while we can't speak every language, there's always someone who can speak it.
Historically, this obviously could not be the case.
When Columbus met indigenous Americans for example, there was no such system in place.
My question is pretty straightforward.
When two different civilizations met for the first time and had no reference for the language the other was speaking, how exactly did they go about communicating and bridging that communication?
How do you teach language to someone when you have no reference for their version of the words being spoken? What was the process of this like?
More times than not, the civilizations had heard of each other through mutual contact with other separate cultures, and often shared a common language that wasn't the primary language for either. The FAQ has a section about cross-cultural communication, lingua francas, and how people learned languages. More can be said about specific instances, but to highlight a couple examples: