When in Barcelona...

Her solution was to corner The Diner's Spanish chef, Carlos, for some crash lessons. A few basic phrases later and the soap opera's resident barmaid was off.

Tricia's not entirely successful efforts to learn the language were understandable - after all, being unable to speak a word of the lingo abroad can be a frustrating experience.

Trying to order a taxi, book into a hotel room or find the airport in time to catch the flight home all become mammoth ordeals if no one understands what you are trying to say. Even those who manage to survive by pointing, flapping their arms and speaking English - loudly - to obliging foreigners who have bothered to learn our language are missing out. For the chances of making friends with local people are minimal.

By comparison, those who make the effort to learn just a few phrases can reap dividends.

Actress Dame Diana Rigg is one celebrity who always memorises some foreign lines before leaving home. ''I was in Hungary recently, where the language is terribly difficult, but because I bothered to learn 'please' and 'thank-you' and the other civilities, everyone was thrilled,'' she says.

However, many people fall into the camp of Desert Island Discs presenter Sue Lawley, who wants to learn Italian. She has confessed: ''I've bought the tapes, but somehow there never seems to be the right moment to listen to them.''

Lawley does speak French and German, which she studied at university. That puts most Brits in the shade, since three-quarters of us can't communicate in any foreign tongue.

For many people, this is not for want of making good resolutions. Plenty of us vow to learn the local lingo before going on holiday but somehow busy work schedules get in the way. Suddenly, there's just a couple of weeks to go and knowledge has still not progressed beyond a mispronounced ''bonjour'' or ''gracias''.

People in this position, who wonder if crash course learning could give them a good grasp of a foreign tongue, will be encouraged to know that the experts say yes - or oui.

Helene Marchand, a course administrator at the French language school Alliance Francaise, says a beginner who takes an intensive course, of perhaps a morning's tuition each day for a fortnight, should pick up ''survival French''. "You would have done 30 hours and should be able to inform people who you are, where you want to go and what you want to do," she says. ''In terms of language, it's fairly restricted, but it's enough not to panic. What you will know will be enough to make contact and bridge between yourself and the person who is trying to help you.''

Marchand says such courses are useful before going on holiday, but she warns that miracles don't happen. She says: ''You wouldn't be able to pick up conversation on the phone and certainly wouldn't be able to do accents or understand people who speak too quickly.''

Similar advice is given by Eric Baber, director of studies at NetLearn Languages, which gives tuition in Spanish, Italian and Russian over the Internet.

Baber, who is half German, says crash courses are certainly not a waste of time. He says: ''If you study for three hours a day for two weeks, you are likely to get up to a good communication level. If you are going on holiday, you'll be able to order a meal, get a taxi, book into a hotel room. However, you won't be able to have an in-depth discussion about politics because that would require quite a range of special vocabulary.''

NetLearn, which is found at www.nll.co.uk, has online teachers who communicate live with their pupils via audio facilities or webcam.

Those who take part in group learning, costing £6 an hour, may find themselves sharing virtual class with pupils around the globe.

Another fast learning option would be language courses in book or tape form. These can be purchased in bookshops or can sometimes be hired from local libraries.

Anny King, acting director of the Language Centre at Cambridge University, advises people who want to learn enough to get by on holiday to try the BBC tapes, since they are geared towards this market. She believes everyone can learn to speak another tongue and dismisses the idea that some people just don't have a brain for languages. She says: ''You have learned your own language so you have already got a linguistic framework in your mind. You are not aware of it, but it is there.''

Other common excuses for avoiding learning a language are similarly dismissed by the experts. Age is no barrier; Marchand says many of the pupils in her school's advanced classes are retired.

Nor is failure to successfully learn another language in the past an excuse. Some people can find one lingo difficult and another easy. And as for a hatred of learning grammar, King says: ''A lot of people say they like talking but don't like doing grammar. That is a nonsense. If you like talking, it means you can put a sentence together.''

However, all the experts warn that crash learning of languages will only be useful in the long term if you keep practising. Otherwise all that hard-won knowledge will be rapidly lost.

King says: ''I often tell my students that learning a language is like having a relationship. You can't just have a relationship on a Friday night and then forget for a month, go to pick it up again and expect everything to be rosy - it doesn't work like that.''