If you want to order breakfast, you can memorize things from a phrase book, or you can just carry the phrase book with you. And yes, of course, what I said was

If you want to order breakfast, you can memorize things from a phrase book, or you can just carry the phrase book with you. And yes, of course, what I said was with "mastery of the language" as the goal in mind. You might have a point for "similar" languages, but even then you will be setting yourself to learning bad habits. My native language is Arabic. I learned English when I was in high school, and now I'm learning Japanese. All very different languages.