The best travel phrasebooks: which ones you really need (and where for)

A translation app needs battery, signal and often a connection that costs money abroad. A paper phrasebook doesn't: it opens in the queue at the ticket office, gets passed to the taxi driver, survives a humid day in your backpack. That's why choosing among the best travel phrasebooks remains a concrete decision, not a nostalgic one. Here you'll find the Italian series that actually exist, with their strengths, and some guidance on which language to take depending on where you're going.

The series

**The Italian series to know**

The most widespread series is "I frasari" by Lonely Planet, published in Italian by EDT. It comes at several levels: the "Frasario-dizionario", the most complete, with thousands of entries and a mini-dictionary both ways; the "Frasari essenziali", pocket-sized at around ninety pages; and "I piccoli frasari". It covers dozens of languages, from Japanese to Turkish, from Korean to Latin American Spanish.

Assimil instead offers the "Guide di conversazione", often sold as a "Kit di conversazione" with downloadable audio and paired with the pocket "...in tasca" line. The approach is educational: first the basic structures and pronunciation, then the vocabulary divided by situation. Good if you also want to understand a little of how the language works, not just repeat phrases.

Zanichelli works on two fronts. "Le parole per viaggiare" (English, French, German, Spanish) is a genuine phrasebook, organised into sections — general, practical, food and drink, shopping, leisure, emergencies — with cultural boxes and illustrated plates. The "il Mini" series is instead a pocket dictionary that includes the "Parole in viaggio" app, with a phrasebook and audio pronunciation that works offline: a useful bridge between paper and phone.

Two classics remain: the "...per viaggiare" series by Giunti (the "Inglese per viaggiare" is the forerunner, divided into understanding, travelling, living, solving, discovering) and the Berlitz phrasebooks, the pocket "Phrase Book & Dictionary" that many know from the English-language editions.

Choosing the language

**Which language for which destination**

Spanish is the language that pays off most: you need it in the Castilian cities like Cuenca and in the villages of Aragon like Albarracín, but also on the other side of the ocean. Watch out for the variant, though: for Mexico City and for Buenos Aires it's better to go for "Latin American Spanish", which Lonely Planet publishes as a separate title (the pronunciation, vocabulary and a few courtesies change).

French opens more doors than you'd think: not only Paris and the amphitheatre of Lutetia, but the villages of Occitania like Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, where little English is spoken. For Portugal — the Roman theatre of Lisbon or the Alentejo of Mértola — remember that European Portuguese sounds different from Brazilian: choose the right edition.

In Germany and the German-speaking area (the courtyards of Berlin, Romanesque Vienna) you can often get by in English, but a phrasebook helps with menus and signs. It's a different matter for languages with another alphabet: for the Greece of Monemvasia and of Athens, for the Turkey of Istanbul, for the Arabic of Cairo and Marrakech, for the Japanese of Tokyo and Kyoto, the value of the phrasebook doubles: beyond the phrases it gives you the transliteration and, often, the characters to point at with your finger.

Using the phrasebook

**How to use them without drawing attention**

A few small tricks make the difference. Study in advance the twenty formulas you'll use every day: greetings, "please" and "thank you", "how much does it cost", "the bill", "where is", the numbers up to twenty. Keep a bookmark on the emergencies section and on the food one (allergies included). Don't read the whole phrase out loud: point to the line and let them answer, then show the page. Mark in pencil the words you really need — every trip has its own handful. And learn the pronunciation of the numbers: understanding a price said out loud is worth more than a hundred perfect phrases never spoken.

The best phrasebook, in the end, is the one you open. A light pocket edition you always carry beats a complete volume left behind in the hotel.