Best Foreign Language Phrasebooks

Over 700 conveniently organized expressions include terms for modern telecommunications as well as phrases related to transportation, shopping, medical and emergency situations, and other common circumstances. Pablo Garcia-Loaeza is an Assistant Professor of Spanish at West Virginia University, where he specializes in Latin American literature and culture.

If so, then this thoroughly revised second edition of Boye Lafayette De Mente's classic, bestselling phrase book and Japanese dictionary is for you. It's tiny 0.4 x 4.1 x 5.9 inches size makes it incredibly convenient to travel with but without losing the essential content for communication. The book included some good introductory material about pronunciation and structure that's also helpful for wrapping your head around Japanese.

All grammatical rules are illustrated with phrases and sentences that you can incorporate directly into your working vocabulary, and hints are generously sprinkled throughout, showing you how to replace difficult constructions with simpler ones. Constantly drawing comparisons with English construction, it presents in logical order all the major aspects of Portuguese grammar: word order, forming questions, nouns and articles, adjectives and adverbs, possessives, demonstrative adjectives and pronouns, how to form negatives, personal pronouns, conjunctions and prepositions, how to conjugate verbs in the major tenses, prepositions and infinitives, and so on.

And don't miss Runny Babbit Returns , the new book from Shel Silverstein! In Shel Silverstein's popular tale of few words and simple line drawings, a tree starts out as a leafy playground, shade provider, and apple bearer for a rambunctious little boy. At this point in the story, the double-page spread shows a pathetic solitary stump, poignantly cut down to the heart the boy once carved into the tree as a child that said "M.E. When there's nothing left of her, the boy returns again as an old man, needing a quiet place to sit and rest. (All ages) --Karin Snelson “If you’re looking for a children’s book that teaches generosity or unselfishness, most people will point you right to The Giving Tree , Shel Silverstein’s lovely story of a tree that will do anything for the boy it loves—and for good reason.

The Japanese language has two basic writing systems, hiragana and katakana, in addition to the one that uses Chinese characters or Kanji. Stout is the author of Japanese Hiragana and Katakana for Beginners and Let's Learn Japanese , both available from Tuttle.