frutti.gummi

I now have three phrasebooks, the newest being Japanese. I bought the German and Italian ones a few years ago when I moved to Europe. I found them to be pretty useful. The book is divided into several chapters, e.g. on banking, buying food, seeing a doctor, and even dating! I especially like the culinary section that lists the words for food and drinks. It also contains notes on local culinary specialties as well as local customs and culture. All these books that I bought have the same content structure so I'm already familiar with the content and can retrieve specific information as fast, even on the new book.

I think these books are more suitable for people who are trying to live in the specific country because they contain extensive information that a visitor/traveler usually do not need. The presentation of the information is also not geared for easy retrieval.

I've carried my phrasebooks around with me for the first few months in Germany and Italy. I rarely needed to take them out but I wanted to be able to say or understand something when I need to. And I could when I had the books with me. For example, I had once forgoten how to say the color blue in Italian. I wanted to ask if the top comes in blue as well. Phrasebook to the rescue! As my grasp of the languages improves, I have kinda abandon them though. At least I still kept them.

My friend mentioned that I should get one of those electronic dictionaries that most of my Chinese and Japanese friends have. I think the device can also say the phrases. It is very handy to be able to just pick a phrase and have the device say it to the local person. But I still need to be able to understand the reply! Maybe the person can type the reply in the device and then it'll be translated into English? Anyway, I'll just stick with my phrasebooks. I enjoy learning languages. :) But I usually only learn them when I need to. I guess that makes me a lazy learner.