Rick Steves' French Phrase Book and Dictionary

Comment: The author's organization of the material is by major topics such as Traveling, Eating, Sleeping, Money, etc. I found this very hard to use 'in the field' since I couldn't quickly guess where he put things I needed.

For example, I wanted to check the pronunciation of a letter in the French alphabet and I needed it pretty quickly since someone was waiting on me to come up with it. I couldn't find it in the book although I knew I had it seen it there when I reviewed it the night before. I gave up and muddled through. That night, I found the French alphabet pronunciation list in the "Sleeping" section of the book. IMHO, something as basic as the alphabet should have been in a section in the front or back cover or in the tear out 'cheat sheet' for quick and easy reference. At least, it should get its own section that is clearly identified in the Table of Contents rather than being listed in small print under the "Sleeping" topic.

To me, that's the perfect example of how this book was virtually useless in the field.

There were no good maps of France (in general) or Paris (in particular) or any other city. (I'm guessing many people complained about this issue and that's why the newest version (2010) alludes to a map in the title.) The only maps were crude, gross, hand-drawn outlines of the world, France, America, etc. that were useless for virtually any real-world application.

There was NO information on verb conjugation rules so, if you know something about the language, this book won't help you extend your knowledge and construct complete, proper sentences.

So much space was consumed by phrases that might (or might not) apply to your exact situation that there was nowhere near enough room for a decent French/English and English/French dictionary. I rarely found a specific word I needed in the dictionary sections. Also, the dictionary section doesn't indicate whether a noun is masculine or feminine so, even if you do find the word you're looking for, you don't know how to use it in a sentence. Finally, the dictionary offers no pronunciation help.

We found the European train system to be very confusing as to ticketing requirements and this book was, yet again, useless in that area. Some of the information seemed to be wrong. For example, the book refers to using a bank to change your US Dollars into Euros. In our experience, there were no banks in Paris or Cannes that allowed that. Instead, we had to use money exchange stores we found.

I also had the Italian version of this book for use when we were in Italy and it had the same problems.

Although I can tell the author put a lot of work into these books, frankly, I don't see any real use for these books in the field and I simply cannot recommend them. I hope this helps someone.

Comment: I was recently in France with 2 other friends. We all had different phrase books. I had this book, one friend had the "French Phrases for Dummies" (which was complete garbage), and another had (I think) the Fodors French phrase book. With the Rick Steve's book, I was able to find the phrases we needed in about 1/10th the time it took my friend with the Fodor's book to find them, and my friend with the "Dummies" book was lucky to find anything at all.

Once again, Rich Steves shows he is the master in all things about traveling to Europe.

Comment: As with many/most/all of the RS books, the enthusiasm for the topic within is contagious. RS focuses on the essentials and the fun, combined in a way to make one actually want to learn french. The book is well-written and well-organized for finding what you need for any particular situation, But, a word of warning, don't wait until your plane ride to France to begin studying this tool. As with any language learning, it will take a bit of time to read through this reference, then practice using what you learned before you are required to. That said, have fun doing it!

Comment: We used this mostly for the menu decoder. There was a surprise moment when we used it for the medical description at a pharmacy. This book paid for itself there!

Comment: An intelligent and useful phrase book but full of surprises. You have to read the whole thing--how to handle yourself in a bar (Viva la France!!), how to tell the taxi driver that he is going so fast that you are going to throw up, and on and on. But lots of useful stuff too, including phrases that a standard guidebook wouldn't think to tell you about.