Customer Reviews
This book was invaluable to us
My husband and I travelled to Spain for our honeymoon knowing very little Spanish (cerveza, por favor and gracias were basically it). This book helped us to communicate with ease. The book is organized by situation to allow you to find stuff quickly, and also includes a small dictionary. Its small size made it easy to carry with us everywhere. We also carried the Living Language Spanish-English dictionary to help us translate specific words, but to put them in phrases that actually made sense we used this book. We will definitely buy other phrasebooks by Fodor's for our next trip.
Outstanding
I have this book and several other Spanish language books. This is the best of the lot. It has a dictionary of most common words, a useful phase section with pronunciation and useful information about Spain and Latin America. It is worth every bit of the price. Es muy bueno.
No hablo Espanol!
I'll get straight to the point: Do NOT buy this unless you have a basic, solid knowledge of Spanish already.
This CD set is comprised of phrases, first said in Enlish, then repeated in Spanish. The Spanish pronunciation is difficult to understand without the book in front of you- which is confusing to follow.
This CD set does not teach grammar, pronouns, tenses, etc. It only teaches phrases- complete sentences.
In order to benefit from this set, you will need to already understand some basic verbs and pronouns (gender and formalities) or you will become lost very quickly.
This CD set is only good if you need to quickly memorize phrases for traveling- but remember, you will also need to UNDERSTAND what people say to you. It's better to learn the basic language skills than to memorize, "Where is the bus station?" and realize you have no idea what the response means!
I recommend starting with a "Teach Yourself Spanish" course first. That will give you a good foundation.