Product Description

This Spanish word-power builder presents more than 5,000 words and phrases with translations into English. The feature that makes this vocabulary book distinctive is the way words are divided into themes, grouped together so that the foreign traveler or language student can find words related by subject. The subject themes include business terms, medical terms, household terms, scientific words and phrases, units of measurement, clothing, food and dining, transportation, art and culture? 24 separate themes in all. The new second edition has been expanded and updated with increased vocabulary.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #59436 in Books
• Published on: 2003-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780764123962
• Condition: USED - GOOD
• Notes:
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Language Notes
Text: English, Spanish

From the Back Cover
Spanish words and phrases are presented with their English translations according to themes reflecting experiences that we encounter in our everyday lives. This novel approach to words and their meanings allows both travelers and language students to find the related words that they need grouped together for fast and easy reference. Newly expanded, and categorized according to 41 themes, this bilingual phrasebook contains a total of more than 9,500 useful terms.

Phrasebooks in This Series:
Mastering French Vocabulary
Mastering German Vocabulary
Mastering Italian Vocabulary
Mastering Spanish Vocabulary

Customer Reviews

A good book for building spanish vocabulary.
I highly recommend this book for a person who is, like me, passed the beginner spanish level and wants to increase his or her vocabulary. It lists over 5,000 words grouped into 41 subjects and includes useful bilingual phrases that reenforce learning. I don't recommend this book for beginners because some knowledge of the spanish language is required to use it. Everything is translated from spanish to english and there is no english to spanish guide.

An essential book for your library
I find this book to be very good. It offers 5500 words or so for a person to learn which is more than enough to cover general conversation on any theme, explain any thought, and say anything that is not deeply technical. A typical person's vocabulary is between 12,000-15,000 words though many of them are not used. This book is great-it is organized by themes and has more advanced words in gray. I recently got this book and find that it rounds out my vocabulary. I recommend this one and 1,001 Pitfalls in Spanish by Barron's. Both are absolutely essential for native English speakers. In fact, those two books and a lot of reviewing is adequate in my estimation for anyone with very little background in Spanish to rise to a level of fluency achieved by a small percentage of the 'gringos' who try to learn it. I'd give it a '10' except I think it would be neat to have even more vocabulary-perhaps 8000 words to involve more technical and medical terms, etc. They also try to stick to fairly universal terms understandable in any Spanish-speaking country. Many of the words are more from Spain than, say, Mexico(in my estimation) but are universal enough to be used almost anywhere. I rank it to be a "Must-Buy."

Powerful, but...
...capable of producing some fairly alarming editing errors, for one. Things like "To abrigo es distinto..."

A second important item of note to potential purchasers is that the book assumes you have THE ENTIRE VERB SYSTEM down cold. Each of the 41 sections of the book has 'standard' and 'advanced' sections of vocabulary. But Word 1 in the standard list could fire off an example that features a sentence that combines conditional and subjunctive imperfect tenses. After all, it's a vocabulary - and not grammar - book. But just make sure you know that going in.

Third point - I can't figure out what make a word or expression worthy of 'advanced' vs. 'standard.' I'm just opening up to a random page (p. 338) as I write this review, and I see the words 'apenas,' 'mayor,' and 'menor' in the advanced section, while 'de ninguna manera' sits in the standard. Odd, huh?

Despite all these objections, this book is really a good edition to your library. Its triumph is the groupings of the words and phrases into 41 loosely defined categories. Despite what I think are three valid criticisms here, reading and re-reading this book is an effective way to increase your vocabulary. Which, after all, is its primary goal.