Easy Spanish Phrase Book: Over 770 Basic Phrases for Everyday Use (Dover Easy Phrase)

For the price, you get a lot of bang for your couple of bucks. Although this little book doesn't cover much material or grammar rules, you can use the ready-made phrases to make more phrases as you increase your Spanish vocabulary. This along with a Spanish/English dictionary helped me pass my Spanish I class when I had to write sentences in Spanish for homework. Some other reviewers didn't like it because the phrases sound touristy, overly formal or out-dated, but I would rather learn proper/formal Spanish before trying to master the colloquial. Besides, it is probably safer to use the more-formal Spanish when traveling. What if you get an idiom wrong trying to use the local dialect, offend the natives, and then who knows what may happen?! If you speak formally and get it wrong, the locals might be more forgiving because they'll figure that the gaffe was unintentional. Besides, it is unfair to critisize a $2.00 phrase book for sounding touristy when that is the main purpose for the book-- to help a vacationing English speaker communicate in a Spanish-speaking country. That's it's purpose, and that is just what it does, despite whatever gringo-isms it may contain. It is also useful reference for someone taking a beginner's Spanish class. Since it is so cheap, it's not a big loss if you don't share my enthusiasm about it's worth. So go ahead, buy it today!

I recently went to Costa Rica, and this book proved to be invaluable. I especially learned the phrase "tengo mucho prisa." :-) It is small and lightweight, but has many commonly-used phrases.

Happy to receive this book. Very useful and in wonderful condition.
Arrived promptly.

I bought this book when I was first learning Spanish and actually never touched it in my beginner stages. The book contains useful phrases that you'd need to know; however, they way they translate them into Spanish is almost overly proper and polite and if you were talking to any native Spanish speaker using these phrases, you would just seem awkward. I will say, though, that if your intention isn't to learn Spanish, but just to learn some phrases to get you by while traveling, this book might be ok...just expect some strange looks with some of the phrases.

This is a helpful book in many ways, however it is out of date. I wish I had checked when it was printed, so I would have known that many of the phrases that were commonly used then, are quite awkward now. However, much of the information remains useful. Also, I planned to use this book when working in a third world country, however it would be much more useful in a tourist's back pocket.