Common travel phrases in French, Spanish, Italian, & German
 

Last week we launched a spiffed up language section on the site with the help of our friends at Living Language. There are recordings of over 150 helpful phrases in each language that you can listen to, as well as a free downloadable pdf that you can print out and take with you on your trip.

The main section can be found here: http://www.fodors.com/language/

<b>Shortcuts to the various languages</b>
Spanish - http://www.fodors.com/language/spanish/
Italian - http://www.fodors.com/language/italian/
French - http://www.fodors.com/language/french/
German - http://www.fodors.com/language/german/

Hope it comes in handy!

Kudos for doing this

How about one in English for foreign Fodorites going to the U.K. or USA, etc.?

Thanks, Katie. I have actually used the previous version over the last couple of years. It's a very useful feature here, IMO.

Good effort, and a useful tool for many, but quite a few mistakes. Le menu, for example, is not the menu. Accents missing. I think Living Language should edit and proofread this for you.

Thanks for the feedback--I'll follow up with LL about the accents; a quick glance through the French guide and I see the accents but if there were some missing I wouldn't be the one to note it---French was sadly one of the my worst subjects in school.

I thought menu was menu; will email the folks that worked on it.

Palenque---your idea is a good one; I know they have English language products. It would be great to be able to offer something like that too. It might have been difficult in this format to select a primary language to display the definition.

Cool!

:-)

Menu is la carte. And while they talk about how you need to learn about masculine and feminine in French, the examples they give don't reflect that. For example, they said "le voici" means "here it is." Well, if what is here is feminine, its "la voici." Lots of examples of that. In Italian, they're confused about dove and dov'è. In German they have spacing problems: "öff net" instead of öffnet." And I've only just glanced at it.

Nice :-) A few errors but not many.

Does this bus go to Wald street?
Fährt dieser Bus zur Wald Strasse?
correct is:
Fährt dieser Bus zur Waldstraße?

I like my steak rare.
Ich möchte mein Steak roh.
correct is:
Ich möchte mein Steak blutig.
("Roh" means right off the shelf, completely uncooked). :D

16
sechszehn
correct is:
sechzehn

I checked the German part - really good job, well done. However, one rather grave mistake:

>I like my steak rare.< Is NOT "Ich möchte mein Steak roh." This means "raw". The correct translation is: "Ich möchte mein Steak englisch."

And:
>I like my steak medium.< Correct: "Ich möchte mein Steak medium." Or: "Ich möchte mein Steak rosa."

And, for the introduction: German is also one of the three official languages in Luxembourg and one of the three official languages in Belgium. And it is also official language in some regions of Italy.

Travellers wallet looks good to:

Gravest error:
"Ich habe einen Herzschlag" means
"I have a heartbeat"

intended was

"Ich habe einen Herzinfarkt" or "Herzanfall" meaning
"I have a heart attack"

"a fax machine" is "ein Faxgerät" or just "Fax".