The Perfect Phrasebook for College Students Studying Abroad

Last summer before I went to Paris, I was chosen as the family member that would learn French. I turned to Rosetta Stone to help me learn the basics. While I did learn numbers and how to conjugate verbs, I had one complaint: I wasn’t learning the need-to-know phrases (as I didn’t have time to make it through the whole program).

I could say “the blue car” or “the man fell” or “the horse walks,” but I didn’t learn many phrases that tourists need to know. Two Dartmouth seniors, Dan Hochman and Mike Lewis, ran into the same problems with traditional phrasebooks. According to an article in The Dartmouth, “‘We were in Florence, Italy, for sophomore Spring and we had a bunch of standard phrasebooks, but we didn’t want to use any of the phrases in there,’ Hochman said.

“Their resources provided “irrelevant” phrases including ‘Where can I get diapers?’ so the pair decided to create a book that catered specifically to the needs of college students, he said.”

Their book titled “Can We Swim Here (Naked)?: The College Student’s Phrasebook for Having Fun” includes phrases translated into French, Italian and Spanish. The phrases are categorized into six chapters: “Eat,” “Sleep,” “Daytime Fun,” “Nighttime Fun,” “No Fun,” and “The Basics.”

This book is the perfect resource for a student going abroad. The phrases were translated by native speakers and are phonetically spelled out to facilitate learning. As this phrasebook is pocket-sized, it is easy to carry so that students’ will always have the means of saying exactly what they want despite language barriers. So if you know a student going abroad, think about visiting Barnes and Noble to buy them (or yourself) a departure gift that you know they will enjoy and really use!