Hungarian Phrase Book & Dictionary (Berlitz Phrase Books)

Rating:
Summary: Completely worthless
Review: If I'd give it zero (which I may be able to but don't know how), I would. There are some general problems with the book listed next and a really really BAD problem listed at the end.
If you're going to a major city in Hungary, say Budapest, don't bother with this book. Almost everyone there speaks English anyway so to the extent that you need to learn phrases like "thank you", "please", etc. just to be polite, you can use the language index from a regular old guidebook like Fodors. Even if you do go out into the country, you won't be able to use much more that what's in the guidebooks anyway. After all, a few key phrases and lots of pointing and smiling will get you farther than being able to say lots of complicated phrases in Hungarian. Sure I can phoenetically babble all the mumbo jumbo I want, but that doesn't mean that I can actually communicate something with someone in Eastern Europe.
And THE WORST THING ABOUT THIS BOOK! is the fact that the phonetic notation that it uses is almost worse than actual Hungarian (which is saying a lot.) You'll find yourself constantly referring back to the index to figure out how to pronounce the ae indicator that they use. This is worthless. Is it really that hard to write out the sounds as you would say them in English? We never could figure out how to say most of the words in the book b/c the phonetic notation was so cumbersome. Almost considered leaving it in our hotel room in Budapest (not sure why we brought it back.)