I am collecting the problems that when foreigners travelling in Yunnan they may have about the language.

So If u have such problems,just tell me,like u dont know how to say the "toilet" " hotel"...

Thanks for answering me,that will be very helpful for me and for the travellers.

First problem - name of the hotel at which I'm staying. For Example - Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott, Ritz, Kempinski, Mandarin Oriental, Green Lake Hotel, Grand Park Hotel, etc - all have rather different chinese names - not remotely similar to their english names or sounds.

Second - even if I can ask the way to the toilet - will I understand the instructions? (left, right, go straight) - not to mention the colloquial expressions - eg meinü, xiaojie, fuwuren, guniang, etc...

Third - Food - beef (steak), hamburger, pork, chicken, fish, and MAYBE lamb or mutton (I detest mutton). Anything else is inedible for most foreigners (example cows intestine, sea cucumber, kidney, liver, heart, pork blood, etc - all exceptionally exotic for most travelers.

Finally - kunming hua...some travelers may have terrible putonghua skills - but couple that with the taxi drivers all using kunming hua to respond...that's a formula for confusion.

These are the basic vocabularies of tourists.

I agree, although even if your Putonghua skills are reasonably good, but maybe there will be instances where the locals will respond with Kunming or Yunnan hua, which may cause confusion or problems if you aren't used to their accents or the differences between the standard language and the local dialect.

Another issue is when there are two or more ways of saying something; for example, you use the less common word and since taxi drivers or locals in general don't know the association between that word and the place or thing you are referring to, that can cause confusion. For example, "Yunnan Minzu Cun" or in characters "云南民族村" is the standard name of the place that can also be referred to as "Yunnan Minzu Bowuguan" ("云南民族博物馆"), a direct translation of Yunnan Nationalities Museum, the English name; I believe googlemaps.com also shows this variant (I'm too lazy to check this to confirm now, but you get my drift).

RIGHT thanks for the answer.It is very useful.And I think when taking Taxi.the language problem will be very big cause most taxi drivers can not speak English and good mandarin. I may teach the travelers some Kunming Hua.

So First I should tell them the right name of Some popular hotels,hostels...
Second I should tell them how to describe the direction and toilet words.
Third I should teach them to order food,what they dont eat and what they want.

Then anything else? Just got a book about traveling Chinese language for the foreigners,I think I will get some inspiration from it.