Berlitz Korean Phrase Book (Berlitz Phrase Books) [Paperback]

Berlitz Guides (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 2831562686 | ISBN-13: 978-2831562681 | Publication Date: July 1998 | Edition: 120

Fit every pocket -- and every traveler's need for a compact, easy-to-use, and dependable reference source.

Part language instructor, part tour guide, the world-renowned Berlitz Phrase Book series has been the ideal companion guide for millions of travelers worldwide. Providing a wealth of essential information and practical tips, this popular series, redesigned and with updated phrases and expressions and over 2,300 words covering just about any situation a traveler is likely to encounter, remains the unparalleled market leader.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Since 2000. Hammond, American Map, Langenscheidt Dictionaries, Insight Travel Guides, Delorme – the famous names in the Langenscheidt family. These represent the most authoritative, up-to-date, and extensive travel and reference products available. In January 2003, the renowned Berlitz Publishing became part of the Langenscheidt Group. The Langenscheidt Publishing Group, the premier group of map and travel companies, offers over 4,000 North American and international street maps, road maps, atlases, language-learning, bilingual dictionaries, and travel-related products covering countries, cities, and languages in every continent.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Berlitz Guides; 120 edition (July 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 2831562686
• ISBN-13: 978-2831562681
• Product Dimensions: 5.6 x 4.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,117,657 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Get the Lonely Planet Korean Phrasebook Instead, May 2, 2002

By 

"theemigre" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Berlitz Korean Phrase Book (Berlitz Phrase Books) (Paperback)

The major criticism I have is the rather curious and confusing proprietary pronunciation and romanization system that Berlitz uses. Why not use the more straightforward and internationally accepted revised version of the McCune-Reischauer romanization system which was adopted by the Korean government in July 2000 (used by Lonely Planet)?

Other issues I have are:

1. The pronunciation section on pages 7 and 8 does not cover the double consonants and double vowels that are common in the language and appear in the rest of the book. Even the Lonely Planet Korea Guidebook (which is not even a full phrasebook) covers this in its brief language section.

2. The Berlitz romanization for the very basic and essential phrase "I'd like" is inconsistent between p.18 and p.129 "chooseep-seeyo" vs. "chooseep-seeaw"

3. The pronunciation of the word for "museum" is incorrect on p.13 and 99 and in the dictionary. It should be "pak-mool-gwan", not "pang-mool-gwan", I believe.

I would not have thought a company as reputable as Berlitz would allow these types of deficiencies in its phrasebook.

Get the new Lonely Planet Korean phrasebook instead (unfortunately not yet published when I took my trip).

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Berlitz is smarter than other reviewers, December 2, 2006

By 

Glossika "Glossika" (China) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Berlitz Korean Phrase Book (Berlitz Phrase Books) (Paperback)

This book is an excellent resource for the casual traveler.

It appears to me that the "mistakes" other reviewers, namely theemigre, find in the book are in fact not mistakes. For example, although in Hangul museum is written as "pak-mul-kwan", the words are not supposed to be pronounced this way, but rather "pang-mul-gwan". Think about English, a word ending in "t" then followed by "y" goes through a morphophonemic change becoming "ch": e.g. whatcha doin'?

In Korean, morphophonemic changes are everywhere between syllables. If you learn Hangul, you won't know what those changes are and your pronunciation will be wrong. Words in different contexts may have different pronunciations. So stick with the pronunciations in the book.

Here's a quote from page 8 after introducing the Hangul alphabet: "These are the main sounds connected with each letter, but they can vary and this is reflected in the imitated pronunciation for individual phrases."

It is also ok to not put accents on words in Korean and maintain a steady intonation.

It looks like the guys at Berlitz know what they're doing when they write these romanizations. I'd give them the benefit of the doubt, rather than some layman traveler who learned what the Hangul letter "k" is but didn't learn it can also be pronounced "ng" before a nasal consonant. Besides most travelers won't be attempting Hangul. Let's just be glad theemigre wasn't reviewing a Tibetan phrasebook.

I give this book 5 stars because it fulfills the expectations of a phrasebook and nothing more except a little bit of notes about history and culture and food. As a phrasebook I believe it meets the needs of the casual traveler. It fulfills the need for any kind of traveling situation like eating or shopping when you need to find the name of an item quickly and discuss the price. And the more serious language learner who doesn't have time to take classes can actually learn quite a bit from this book.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Something Important Missing, August 22, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Berlitz Korean Phrase Book (Berlitz Phrase Books) (Paperback)

The major problem with this Korean phrase book, is that it does not show any accent marks for the words it lists. Seeing the pronunciation is not helpful at all, if the reader does now know which syllable(s) to accent. Otherwise it seems to be a good book.