Lonely Planet Quechua Phrasebook (Lonely Planet Phrasebooks)

Rating:
Summary: Not at all a necessity
Review: Are you planning to adventure alone into the highlands of Peru? If not, and I wouldn't really recommend it anyway, then this book isn't for you. I recently spent three weeks in Peru visiting the Cusco, Ollyantaytambo, Sacred Valley, and Lake Titicaca areas and never needed it. Quechua is the language still used by the porters and residents of the highlands, but everyone else speaks Spanish. I was mislead by some travel guides to believe that Quechua was spoken in the main cities and that I'd need it to do pretty much anything. The reality is that you'll just need to speak Spanish or have a good Spanish phrasebook and on the off occasion that you have need to speak to someone who only speaks Quechua, you're more than likely to have a guide with you that can do just that.

That said, it is always interesting to be exposed to new languages and the historical culture of an area. Quechua is a language better understood through direct instruction with a guide rather than attempting to learn it from a text.

Rating:
Summary: Good short introduction to Basic Quechua for Tourists
Review: Teaches the phrases a tourist would use to travel in the Andes. You won't be able to carry on much of a conversation, But the natives will warm up to you for trying.

Rating:
Summary: Easy to use, covers a lot of material, inexpensive
Review: This easy-to-use reference shows how the words are built, with things like verb endings, infixes, suffixes. It's small, but it has a lot of useful material; for the price it's OUTSTANDING.

The SECOND edition is completely revised, by a different author (excellent teaching credentials), vastly more material -- both more gramatical info, and a wealth of additional vocabulary, plus there is also a Quechua-English section as well as English-Quechua, making it an even more valuable reference.

Some things are perhaps because Lonely Planet has standardized them -- I doubt you'll be asking anyone for a date in Quechua -- but it's still material to practice breaking apart the pieces.

I love the illustrations!