Customer Reviews

European (Eyewitness Travel Phrase Books)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This particular guide is quite helpful if you're travelling to more than, say, three European countries and need to communicate in a different language in each one. It includes a lot of useful phrases and expressions in 14 languages (Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish). It's very simple to use and it's organized in a way that simplifies looking for particular expressions, according to the different situations you may find yourself in.

However, if you intend to go to only one or two countries, you'd be better off getting the specific guides for those specific languages, as you'd be getting a bit more info than what you get here.

I searched all around for a phrase book that had pronounciation guides that actually match how one would say things in languages I know, french and norwegian. this book is dead on! Many others butcher the norwegian language and confuse french pronounciation. This book may not be as 'sleek looking' as others - but it is still small, quite accurate, and has something like 13 languages. Best find for phrase books!

This book covers 14 languages in ~ 400 pages, so you get about 25-30 pages per language, which is not much. Basic phrases and some words. Excellent if you are hopping around Europe through several countries or if you will only be in a place for 1-2 days. However, if you are in a place for more than a few days you will want a book that specializes on that language and that includes a 2-way translation dictionary. This book does not.

This book contains the following for each language. Also for most of these this book has the English word or phrase, the foreign language equivalent and importantly a phonetic spelling of the foreign word or phrase.
- Introduction (pronunciations for special alphabet characters and letter combinations for each language)
- Useful phrases (30-40 basic expression like "My name is", "How much is it?" and "I've lost my passport"). Needed many more of these and I think it missed many common expressions.
- Days, Months & Seasons (self-explanatory, though in practice not that useful)
- Numbers (1-20, 30, 40 etc, 100, 1000, etc)
- Time (self-explanatory, though in practice not that useful)
- Communications (30-40 words and 15-20 short phrases such as "Where is the nearest phone booth?")
- Hotels (30-40 words and 15-20 short phrases such as "Do you have any vacancies" or "When is breakfast")
- Shopping & Eating Out (30-40 words and 15-20 short phrases such as "Do you have...?" or "May I see the menu?")
- Menu Guide - 250-300 words for food items that you'll see on a foreign language menu and english equivalent(e.g. Vino = Wine).

In all this is a great book if you want a small book to carry (it fit in my jeans pocket) and you will be going to places with multiple languages. However, if you are staying in just one or two countries for any period of time get a dedicated phrase book with 2-way dictionary.

My wife and I used it to look up about 10 basic things per language (e.g. "hello" "do you speak english" "I'd like" "One" "Two" "Thank you") as we came into each country. But after the first day or two in each country, we'd leave it in the hotel because a) we learned the basic words we needed b) nearly everyone spoke good english (even in Prague & Budapest) and c) this book didn't have 2-way dictionary for each language (which you can't expect in a book of this size and price).

When traveling in Europe, the language change comes often. It is nice to have a language guide like this in one book.

I have bout this book for one of my previous trips but have not acrually used it until now. I was checking the section on Greek language to get familiar with how to read Greek and to take a look at the basic phrases. The spelling instructions were OK but the choice of phrases simply puzzled me. In the section for the most useful phrases, there was no word "Hello". It is beyond me. A smile and a greeting in a native language will get you farther than any other means of communation or a ton of phrase books. I have tried this a million times during my extensive travels through the years. I searched through the entire book and did not find any greetings in any of the 14 languages represented in this book. It is a shame!

Took this book on a tour of Europe and it was really helpful to have so many useful phrases in every language I needed at my finger tips. I've even lent it to friends who have been holidaying and they have loved it too!
Has basic phrases for tourists in several sections like travel, shopping, eating and help like medical things.
If you are heading to Europe you should get this book!

This book is a very comprehensive guide to everything one would need to know how to say while traveling. The pronunciation guide is extremely well done considering it is not a phonetic transcription. For anyone looking to truly experience Europe and with a desire to show respect for a country's culture and language, this is an excellent purchase.

Spent months waiting for this book to arrive, then agreed to wait for it to be back ordered, only to finally be told that it wasn't going to be available. I ordered it from another group that same day and just got confirmation (2 days later) the it has shipped. Guess I'll be paying more attention to whom is sending the products in the future.