Frommer's Spanish PhraseFinder and Dictionary [Paperback]

... Neither do I. But it's amazing how much comes back to you with this little book gem. I just spent 5 days in the guts of Mexico City on business and I really enjoyed this book. It's small enough to carry around discretely and well organized (like "stuff to say in restaurants" and "stuff to say at hotels"). Really nice for short trips to Mexico. If you ever had high school Spanish - even a million years ago like me - this is a great book because you will kind of remember how to talk Spanish but you'll have forgotten the words. I highly recommend it.

I'm trying to learn Spanish on my own using an assortment of dictionaries, CDs, language guides and texts, and a couple of phrase books. In my search for learning aids I examined a number of phrase books; none were perfect, but this one seemed to have a better balance of features than most:
- Pocket-sized, with good quality flexible paper (not too stiff!)
- A Spanish-English & English-Spanish dictionary, with words indexed to phrases
- A basic language and grammar guide, incl. common verbs and conjugations
- Straightforward clear translations on a broad variety of topics
- Well-organized, clean layout, helpful pronunciation guidance
- Uses illustrations as an aid in appropriate places (e.g. body parts, parts of a car, etc)

Like most phrasebooks, the dictionary section is limited by the space available, but this one seems to include most of the words that are mentioned in phrase section. Still, you'll want to have a real dictionary to supplement this (or any) phrasebook.

What would make this worthy of 5-stars?
- Each section is color-coded along the edge, but there is no color key along the outside cover of the book. This would make it easier to quickly find and locate sections.
- The introductory sections on "Survival Spanish" (key phrases) and the language overview should be beefed up a bit. The grammar section has a surprising amount of useful guidance on verbs, but is much more sketchy about other rules of the language. Another 5 to 10 pages on grammar would go a long way toward making this a near-perfect phrase book.

After carefully examining a number of Spanish phrasebooks, I'm not sure that any of them are quite worthy of 5 stars... but the Frommer's is *very* good and has been the best that I've found.

We selected this phrasefinder thinking it would have good basic information to help us get around in Spain. It was somewhat useful for my husband, who only remembered a few words of high school Spanish and was able to use it to refresh his memory. But, beware: there are mistakes, including a big one on p. 28 of the "Spanish Grammar Basics" section which confuses the verbs "ser" and "ir." Also, this book is full of Latin American words and expressions which don't work in Spain. And, the dictionary in the back is just too small to be of any consequence. It became our running joke that, each time we encountered an interesting new word, it wouldn't be in there. We wouldn't recommend this book, but suggest choosing a compact (well edited!) Spanish-English dictionary for use on your travels.