Unfortunately if you like in the United Kingdom then part of your school life will be spent learning another language. I actually had to learn two languages at school, for 2 whole years. I learnt French and Spanish for years 8 and 9 or school, and then once I had stopped learning them in year 10+ then I could barely remember a word of what I had learnt, and I have never needed to use them either. So what is the point?

I don’t think you can jump into learning a language half heartedly, like just buying a learn French DVD and spending an hour going over some basic phrases, you just won’t get chance to use them, even on holiday. Or even worse, if there is a phrase you can learn on the DVD, like ‘Please tell me where I can buy food’ or something along those lines, then the person you are speaking to might assume you can understand them and try speaking to you in their language!

If you want to learn to speak the language, either because you go on holiday there every year or you want to move there etc, then you really need to do a course of lessons in your own time and learn it for a year or so. It will take a lot longer than that to become fluent in the language, but you will be able to hold a basic conversation with someone and know a lot of useful phrases and words to help you out too. If you don’t want to get that serious though as you only holiday in the country every so often, then I think you are better off getting a phrasebook. That way you have nothing to remember and can show the phrase to the person even if you can’t pronounce it.