I wonder how come I haven’t made it to Italy yet. Ever since I knew the country existed (many, many years ago!), I’ve wanted to travel there. After watching The Talented Mr Ripley, shot in Rome, Naples and Positano, my desire to see Italy grew even stronger. I dream of admiring art in Florence, appreciate fashion in Milan, ride a gondola in Venice, discover Rome, relax on beaches in Sicily, visit Positano, eat home-cooked pasta and pizza, and, of course, speak Italian.
Italian for Tourists: Pocket Edition by Jo Linsdell offers everything you need for getting by in Italy for a couple of days or weeks. Apart from basic phrases and words tourists will need the most, the book includes a pronunciation guide and a small map of Italy.
Divided into 17 distinct chapters including Emergency, Common expressions, Greetings and introducing yourself, Transport, Hotel, Sightseeing, Asking and giving directions, Food and drink, Health, and Shopping, you can easily find what you’re looking for.
Having worked in hostels and as a tour guide plus lived in Italy for 7 years, Jo Linsdell had the right experience to create a guide to the Italian language. If you’re going to Italy, read this book before arriving.
Title: Italian for Tourists Pocket Edition Author: Jo Linsdell ISBN: 978-1-4092-7826-9 Cost: €10,35 Reviewed by Jamieson Wolf
I have always wanted to learn Italian.
There are several reasons for this; but most of all because the language sounds so incredibly beautiful. I would listen to foreign films, to operas, to Italian music and think to myself: I wish I could speak in such a beautiful language.
I would wonder, though, what I would do if I ever travelled to Italy. I’ve looked at every phrase book, every guide book and found no help within their pages. They would talk of grammar, punctuation, places to visit, sites of interest. But none of them ever taught me how to speak Italian.
Until now.
Upon flipping through Italian for Tourists by Jo Lindsell, the whole book looked rather simplistic. After reading through the book several times, I realized that this was part of the books beauty.
What Jo has done is to take a language and bring it back to it’s basics, back to its beauty. She has made the impossible possible with Italian for Tourists: she has helped me to learn another language.
I often struggle with learning new languages and new phrases, but Jo makes it incredibly easy. Italian for Tourists gives you every bit of language that you could possibly need if you were on holiday in Italy.
Divided into seventeen sections, all a tourist has to do is skim the table of contents and skip to the correct section. Sections include hotels, sight seeing, food and drink, greetings and more. Even better, each word and each phrase comes with a pronunciation guide, helping you speak like a true Italian in no time.
I never knew that learning another language could be so simple, so helpful and so much fun. If ever you are going to visit Italy, this is the only book you will need!
Italian for Tourists Pocket Edition by Jo Linsdell
Reviewed by Karen Cioffi Author, Freelance Writer http://karenandrobyn.blogspot.com http://www.twitter.com/KarenCV
Italy is a country I’ve always wanted to go to. It is where my grandparents came from. One of my concerns if travelling to a foreign country though, is the language barrier. What if I needed directions, what if there was an emergency? Well, Jo Linsdell’s book, Italian for Tourists, covers every possible situation that may arise. This is the one book I would have to bring with me.
Ms. Linsdell divided the book into seventeen very informative sections. The first section, Pronunciation Guide, has subsections including word stresses and the Italian alphabet. The Basics subsections include numbers, colours, parts of the day, days of the week and much more. Some of the subsections in Transport include words and phrases for cars, trains, ships and airports. A few of the other sections are: Common Expressions, Hotel, Directions, and Food and Drink. But, the most important section is Emergency (just in case). This section lists the body parts among many other words and phrases. It even includes phrases a doctor may ask you. The detail is amazing.
The format of this book is simple and uncluttered with easy to read font. This allows for easy and quick access to the section and word/phrase you’re looking for. It is an easy to read and understandable tour guide.
Italian for Tourists includes almost every conceivable word or phrase you would need. It also provides you with the information to pronounce them. The detail in this book is wonderful and thoughtful. It is easy to see that Ms. Linsdell must have devoted a great deal of time and effort to create such a useful and helpful book. If you are travelling to Italy, this is a must have book.
Tell us about your book Italian for Tourists: Pocket Edition
Italian For Tourists: Pocket Edition a phrasebook, published through the online content marketplace Lulu.com, is a basic guide to the Italian language covering phrases and words most needed by tourists. It includes all the words and phrases a tourist is likely to need during their stay in Italy as well as a pronunciation guide and a map of Italy.
How did you come to write an Italian language guide for tourists? I came to Italy with the plan of staying for 3 days and figured I could get by for such a short stay using English. With this in mind I hadn’t prepared for the fact that Italians might not speak English. In fact a lot of them don’t or if they do it’s very limited. I felt rude not being able to thank or greet people in Italian, after all I was in Italy. If an Italian came to England not being able to speak English how far would he get? I got myself a phrasebook to help me but a lot of the information was irrelevant and it took ages to find what I needed. I wrote this book bearing all this in mind. A tourist doesn’t need to know everything about Italian grammar and the in’s and out’s of renting an apartment. They want to have an easy to use reference book of the language they will need to use and understand during their stay.
This book is listed as a "pocket edition," do you have a more extensive guide available? Italian for Tourists started out as an ebook. I got a lot of messages asking for a printed version and so I published the 6x9 edition. Since then I’ve had many requests for a more travel friendly size and so now it’s available in the new pocket format too.
Anything else you'd like to add? I’d just like to add that anyone who purchases a copy of Italian for Tourists Pocket Edition from Lulu.com on Saturday 9th May will get a free e-book of their choice from my collection by sending me proof of purchase to jo_bins@yahoo.com.
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