> I remember using phrasebooks in the early 2000s in Europe. They were better than nothing, but never as useful as you hoped. I had the opposite experience. I

> I remember using phrasebooks in the early 2000s in Europe. They were better than nothing, but never as useful as you hoped. I had the opposite experience. I found the phrase books to be by far the best way to get by, because I didn’t have to worry too much about conjugation, word genders, and so on. One of them was the way I bootstrapped my way into speaking Polish with a girlfriend who spoke no English.