Each chapter consists of example sentences and lists of words. This will help you put together exactly the right sentence you need for any situation. Metric conversion charts and the most commonly used pictograms found in European and Arab air-ports and railroad stations will give you further support.

Of course you can just show the person you're talking to the translation of the sentence you wish to say. But the easily distinguished, phonetic alphabet will enable you to speak your chosen phrase without any knowledge of the foreign language whatsoever. In order to give you an indication of the proper intonation, we have inserted punctuation marks into the phonetic spellings.

There are two equivalents in the European languages of the English you (and your), depending on whether you are talking to a close friend or a child or to someone you do not know or are merely acquainted with. We generally give the more formal form in the example sentences. In some languages, however, particularly in Italian, the familiar form is more common.