Customer Reviews

Shortcut to Spanish (English and Spanish Edition)

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This book takes an approach that is much different from the typical phrase book. It boils the Spanish language down to its bare essentials. It teaches the reader a Core Vocabulary of essential words and then provides many useful examples showing how the core vocabulary can be used to build useful phrases.

This is *not* the book to get if you just want to travel in the Spanish-speaking world and have a phrasebook filled with a broad selection of canned phrases. It *is* the right book if you wish to start learning the language and want to try to start communicating on your own.

The approach used here is so simple and straighforward that I would love to see an expanded version of this book. Many of us are intimidated by the thought of mastering a foreign language, but think, "Sure, I can learn a few hundred words." If Berlitz were to publish a slightly more comprehensive version, titled something like "Berlitz Essential Spanish: The 500 Words You Need for Basic Communication", I'd be first in line to buy it. The contents of this book could form the opening chapters of the expanded version.

Anyway, this book is small, brief, and limited in scope, but really quite good at what it sets out to do...