The Rough Guide to German Dictionary Phrasebook 2: Dictionary Phrasebook

by Lexus Ltd.

A German phrasebook, laid out dictionary-style for easy access. It includes English-German and German-English sections and a menu reader. Feature boxes contain cultural know-how and other matters... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1858286107
• ISBN13: 9781858286105
• Release Date: May 2000
• Publisher: Rough Guides
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 4.1" x 5.7"

Customer Reviews

Rough Guide German actually enables you to say more than 11 words of German on any trip you might ma

Rough Guide German is structured completely different from most phrase books: The first several dozen pages gives you numbers, days of the week, time, etc., and a 20 minute course in German grammar. Oh no, you might be saying, but it is presented very simply. For instance it presents a handful of common verbs and their conjugations. So on one page you can see how to say "I have," "he has, " etc. and "I like," "he/ she likes," etc. The rest of the book is split between an English-German dictionary, a German-English dictionary, and a multi-page menu reader. What makes the English-German dictionary pages unique, though, is that most every other page (at least) has dialogue boxes relating to the most useful word(s) on that particular page. For instance, when you thumb through the book for the word "live," you get the word itself, but also the phrases "I live in..." and "Where do you live?" It'll take you 10 minutes to find such a phrase in Berlitz or Lonely Planet in their "getting to know others' section. But because Rough Guide is structured as a dictionary, with hundreds of really useful phrases highlighted in boxes within, you can access something you want to say rather swiftly...and actually deliver it just a minute or so after looking for it. Add the grammar section, where you learn useful verbs and how to conjugate their past tenses, and the number section, and you can learn easily to chat with someone about where you are from, where you are going, where you have traveled thus far, what you like/liked, and so on. Likewise, knowing have to say "have" make sit easily to ask whether a hotel has rooms, whether the room has a shower (after thumbing through the book for the word for shower), etc. And when the answer comes back that the hotel doesn't have, or say "we have," you can actually catch what they are saying. If still not persuaded, next time you're in a bookstore compare a Berlitz, a Lonely Planet, and a Rough Guide language phrase book side by side. Lonely Planet German, for example, is basically several pages of basic grammar followed by many sections of phases you won't likely ever use. For instance, the guide provides several pages each of lists of occupations, nationalities, college majors, items of stationary, jewelery, colors, insects, flowers, aquatic sports(!), electrical appliances, camping terms,and so on. Also provided are pat phrases to employ at a hotel's front desk, at a doctor's, at the optometrist, and eating out, among other mini-sections. The book, in effect, is set up to be taken out to be used once a day, if that. It's an improvement on Berlitz phrase books, but not by much. (Berlitz simply divides their books into 10 or so color coded sections such as: "sightseeing," "relaxing," "shopping," traveling around," "money," "eating out," etc.) So, if you just want a book for emergencies (say, breaking a leg, etc.) then Berlitz and/or Lonely Planet phrase books will serve you well...in your pocket until you are faced with

Extremely handy

On a previous trip to Spain, I travelled with a companion who had the Spanish Rough Guide phrasebook, and I was so impressed by that book that I picked up the German version during a trip to Germany.These two phrase books are very thoughtfully laid out. Instead of being broken up into sections: `travel', `going shopping', etc, it is arranged as a English-German German-English dictionary. After each word, a set of phrases involving that word are also translated, both in German and phonetically. This layout, along with the small size of the book, made the book VERY useful for phrases or words needed `on the fly'. The choice of words and phrases -- which is important in a small book -- was also thoughtfully done; what I needed for my buisness travel and my backpacking/hostelling weekend escapes was almost always there. What's more, along with the phrases were little hints for getting buy in Germany - cultural things, mostly; how to answer the phone, or deal with train stations. This once or twice saved me from saying or doing something which would have been a good translation of what I wanted to say, but would have been rude or weird to a German.If you had a decent grasp of German, this book would be too simple for you; and if you wanted to have intelligent, adult converstations in German, well, a phrasebook isn't going to do that for you. But for a traveller who doesn't know any German to speak of but does want to extend the courtesy of trying to get by in the native language for simple things, or at least be able to read a menu (there's a very nice menu-decoder in the back), I found this book to be very handy.I'd have liked the book to be a bit longer (it still could have been pocket-sized with an extra 20-30 pages), and to have had a better pronunciation section. But I was still very happy with the book.