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1.0 out of 5 stars
Terrible phrasebook, don't buy it!!!, November 23, 2005
This review is from: Berlitz Thai Phrase Book & Dictionary (Berlitz Phrase Book) (Paperback)
A month ago before I left for Thailand I bought the Berlitz Thai Phrase Book and CD. It's terrible, anyone who buys it is wasting their money for several reasons:
1} The CD phrases don't match with the book phrases.
2} The phonetic spelling is so bad that all you get is blank stares if you try to pronounce anything by reading it from the book. Thai is a tonal language, correct pronunciation is extremely important.
3} Gender specific words are not distinguished in sentences. Many Thai sentences have gender specific beginnings and endings. But this book uses just one gender in each sentence, usually the male one, so someone with no knowledge of Thai can easily be using the wrong words.
4} Important phrases are not included, while it has stupid ones like "Is there a cheap restaurant nearby?" (there are cheap restaurants everywhere in Thailand, a meal typically only costs one or two dollars).
5} It lacks useful information on how to speak Thai.
6} It's full of mistakes.
I've bought the Lonely Planet Thai Phrasebook since I've been in Thailand. It is very well done except for the small dictionary at the end of the book. I'm currently taking a daily 6 week long Thai language course. The only thing the Berlitz book might be good for is fire starter, or maybe toilet paper in an emergency. I won't sell it to a used bookstore and have some poor sucker buy it.
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2.0 out of 5 stars
It doesn't work, August 21, 2004
This review is from: Berlitz Thai Phrase Book & Dictionary (Berlitz Phrase Book) (Paperback)
Unfortunately this book won't help you speak the language, even the simplest sentences, because the pronunciation guide is written in a very unclear and frustrating manner.
Unlike some other Berlitz guides that I used in the past this one is good for one thing only - to show the necessary phrase in Thai script to the native and hope the script is not as mangled as their "transcription".
The main reasons for confusion are:
1. Wrong intonation marks (and believe me, that is important)
2. Very strange choice of transcription signs for vowels. It bears no resemblance to actual Thai sounds. I think that IPA (International Phonetic Association) signs would be better with proper explanation.
3. Mistakes, mistakes, mistakes...
I cannot judge the correctness of the Thai script translations in the book, but the Thais themselves often laughed while reading the phrases I had shown them and I suspect the native script passages have even more mistakes than this horrible transcription...
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4.0 out of 5 stars
It works, November 29, 2001
This review is from: Berlitz Thai Phrase Book & Dictionary (Berlitz Phrase Book) (Paperback)
Thailand is a place with lots of tourists, no doubt, and many people speak English (and other languages too: French, Japanese, etc.); moreover, when shopping in streets, they'll show you the prices using a calculator, so you shouldn't care for buying a book like this one. However, when I was dinning in a popular restaurant in a small town, the waitress didn't understand English, so this book helped me to know what to order (English translation of the menu is not enough, sometimes), and so on, even to ask for the bill. You don't have to do any effort about the pronunciation, just show the phrase written in Thai to the other person. It has also useful information for tourists, related to each of the topics the book is divided into (meals, transportation, etc.). I missed it very much when I forgot it in the hotel and I had no way to tell to the taxi driver how to reach the place I wanted to. I had to wait 10 minutes to get a taxi with an English speaking driver.
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