This is an interesting question that has often been asked of me by my friends back home. I hope other chime in.
I’m not sure how anyone can form genuine connections or immerse oneself in a culture without a decent grasp of the language.
If you want to sit at a restaurant and make friends with the regulars, volunteer, participate in cultural events there is no way you can do so without learning the local language. Check out the expats sub to see how many people complain of loneliness or not finding partners or feeling isolated after X number of years because they still don’t speak the local language.
If you speak the local language, you could be asking your local friends these questions rather than DNs. Without being able to talk to locals, it’s hard to know what environmental concerns they have, the issues of gentrification, how to best help the local economy, how to participate in cultural celebrations, etc.
Think about this from the opposite perspective- a tourist coming to immerse themselves in the culture of your hometown. I can’t imagine a non-english speaking tourist asking these questions in my small town. They want to come for a bluegrass festival and participate in contra dancing but they don’t speak the language? It would be wild. I’m sure they’d be welcome to observe but not sure how much they’d be able to participate and probably everyone would ignore them.
I’m obviously biased, but speaking languages like Spanish get you so so far. You have over 20 countries and countless cultures to explore with just one language!
I think this is short-sighted. The vast majority of careers are not WFH friendly. If travel is the goal, then OP needs to focus on travel friendly careers.
Sometimes us DNs hang out with tech people and we forget that the huge majority of the workforce is in retail, transportation, and manufacturing. If OP loves construction, that’s great, but they will never be traveling abroad to do it unless they immigrate.