Customer Reviews

Mexican Spanish (Lonely Planet Phrasebooks)

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

 

 

A must if your planning to visit Mexico and its also a great buy if you just learning spanish on your own. I had the Central America Spanish book by Lonely Planet also a few years ago and left it on a locomotive. This one is just as great if not a little better if your going to Mexico. Very well put together and easy to flip threw to find what you need to learn. Ya cant go wrong with any of the language books they print.

I love Lonely Planet products and was very impressed with this Mexican Spanish guide book. When I went to Mexico for a week, I took this book everywhere with me. It was a big help since I did not speak a lot of Spanish. When I would ask locals questions from the phrase book, they understood.

The guide was filled with interesting tidbits of cultural tips that were mixed with a bit of humor. Also, this book had many helpful coloquial terms that you cannot learn in the classroom, like curse words and words for flirting. The sections were well organized and easy to find. I also loved that it had a very long and thorough food dictionary. Only maybe once or twice I couldn't find a food item in the dictionary, but all the other times it was listed.

The only thing that I wish this book had was a more extensive dictionary so when you wanted to form your own sentences, you can look up specific verbs. Also, the book doesn't teach you verb conjugations for forming sentences. Otherwise, the book is great for just simple phrases and quick questions.

As I had been trying to get ready for a trip to Mexico, I realized the Spanish I was brushing up may not be understood in Mexico in particular. It helped me communicate a lot better with the words I needed. A great buy for your trip and portable enough to carry around while you are there. I couldn't find it in a bookstore or library.

I got this book specifically to help me with my Mexican style Spanish. As a beginner, it's a great reference when I want to look up basic words or short phrases quickly. The size is nice for traveling but like most language books this size, the durability is probably going to be an problem. I often run into issues where the pages fall out rather easily.

The book has many phrases that I will never use, like this one under "social": "I don't mind watching, but I would rather not join in". Or "where's the local internet cafe?" If you just ask "Internet?", someone will point you the right way. If you ask the entire sentence you will likely get a detailed response that you will not understand. Also, the word "claro" is not in the book, or at least I couldn't find it. "Claro" is a very commonly used word in Mexico. Its literal meaning is "clear" but it is used as a catch-all word that can mean "OK, sure, of course".

This problem is common in phrasebooks generally, not just this one. I've also used LP's Eastern Europe and Turkey phrasebooks and had similar problems.

Note: I've used many LP country guidebooks and think they are very good.

Very nice addition to learning Spanish. Useful contemporary phrases which aren't always indicated in other materials.

My Spanish is rudimentary. I have difficulty conjugating verbs. This book contains a lot of common questions and phrases. It has simple pronunciation guides. I have found it to be very use and practical.

This is a handy book to carry while traveling in Mexico. It contains many common phrases used while traveling abroad. The color coded sections make finding phrases quick and easy. It is also a nice small size that will fit in your pocket. It will provid you with enough vocabulary to communicate most things you will need on a trip abroad.

I bought a copy of this just before leaving to visit friends in PV. I only discovered on the airplane that the page signatures were all screwed up. In other words, entire sections were out of order. Thus the pages would run something like 29...30...211...212...etc...31. You get the picture.

Aside from that, which made the table of contents and the index fairly useless, I found the book very odd in the phrases it chose to translate.

I sent the book back to Lonely Planet on my return with comments and for a refund and never heard a word back from them.

Buy another phrase book, not this one!