If you are planning to travel to Spain or to any other territory of the world that speaks Spanish as its chief language, which includes all of Latin America, Central America, Mexico and even some parts of Africa, you better familiarize yourself with at least the basics of this language. In most of these nations, the locals will have a very limited knowledge of the English language and you will have to completely rely on your Spanish speaking skills at most times.
Leaving the conventional phrase books and MP3 resources alongside, there are various free websites that offer to teach you the basics of the Spanish language in a user friendly manner, totally free of cost! Cutting to the chase, there are some sites on the World Wide Web that have been developed with tourists in mind, which are full of various useful information for travelers and are chockablock with oft-used Spanish phrases. http://www.travelphrase.com/ is a completely free site that has a comprehensive list of most commonly used travel phrases in 5 major European languages – Spanish, French, German, Italian and Swedish.
http://www.travelphrase.com/EnglishSpanish.htm is the part of this site that deals with travel phrases in Spanish. The first thing that you will notice about this site is its simple and clutter-free interface that lists out the 15 categories (including Conversation, Shopping, Important Signs, Food and Drink, Days and Months, Banking, Money Matters and so on) that it features travel phrases on. Clicking on each of these categories takes you to the page that has quite an all-inclusive list of phrases that you might use in such a situation. There is an English word or phrase that is listed first, followed by its Spanish equivalent.
For example, in the Conversation (http://www.travelphrase.com/EngSpaConversation.htm) page, these are some of the words/phrases you can find:
Hi- ¡Hola!
Good morning - Buenos días
Excuse me - ¡Perdoname!
What is your name - ¿Cómo se llama?
How are you - ¿Cómo está Ud?
Similarly, in the Important Signs (http://www.travelphrase.com/EngSpaImportantSigns.htm) page, you can find the following useful signs and their English translation:
Danger - ¡Peligro!
No smoking - ¡Prohibito fumar!
Stop - ¡Alto!
For rent -Se alquila
The biggest gripe with this site is that it simply lists out the phrases, and offers absolutely no pronunciation help in the form of audio guides or at least, phonetics. For someone who is completely new to the Spanish language and has no clue about its pronunciation, it certainly doesn’t offer much. Also, other than the phrases, the creators of the site could have gone a step ahead and included useful information about Spanish culture, what to expect, how to handle tough situations and so on, which would have made it much more useful. Also, more categories of phrases can be added to the existing 15.
To sum it all up, for someone who has a decent grasp on Spanish pronunciation, and is looking for a simple site that lists out the most commonly used Spanish phrases, http://www.travelphrase.com/EnglishSpanish.htm is the place to go. Those looking for more must look elsewhere.
