Lonely Planet Fast Talk Icelandic

by Lonely Planet, Gunnlaugur Bjarnason

Lonely The world's number one travel guide publisher* Although you can get by in Iceland without speaking the language, knowing just a few phrases can help you make friends, enjoy service with a smile, and discover richer, more rewarding experiences. Get invited to watch an up-and-coming band with Reykjavík locals, book dinner at a buzzing new restaurant, or ask for a glass of the country's best craft beer. About Lonely Lonely Planet is a leading travel media company and the world's number one travel guidebook brand, providing both inspiring and trustworthy information for every kind of traveller since 1973. Over the past four decades, we've printed over 145 million guidebooks and grown a dedicated, passionate global community of travellers. You'll also find our content online, and in mobile apps, video, 14 languages, nine international magazines, armchair and lifestyle books, ebooks, and more. 'Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.' - New York Times 'Lonely Planet. It's on everyone's bookshelves, it's in every traveller's hands. It's on mobile phones. It's on the Internet. It's everywhere, and it's telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.' - Fairfax Media (Australia) * Nielsen Australia, UK, USA, 5/2016-4/2017

Genres: Reference

88 pages, Paperback

Published June 19, 2018

About the author

OUR STORY
A beat-up old car, a few dollars in the pocket and a sense of adventure. In 1972 that’s all Tony and Maureen Wheeler needed for the trip of a lifetime – across Europe and Asia overland to Australia. It took several months, and at the end – broke but inspired – they sat at their kitchen table writing and stapling together their first travel guide, Across Asia on the Cheap. Within a week they’d sold 1500 copies and Lonely Planet was born. One hundred million guidebooks later, Lonely Planet is the world’s leading travel guide publisher with content to almost every destination on the planet.

Reviews

[Karen]

Ok as an introduction to Icelandic but wouldn’t rely on it whilst there. I find some of the phonetics contradictory to earlier explanations within the book itself, but also as someone who has been learning with apps that have native speakers pronouncing words again I find the phonetics not quite there. There’s also some assumption on linguistic knowledge as the book literally states “if you read our coloured pronunciation guides as if they were English, you’ll be understood”: lots of the pronunciation guides include the ö which technically isn’t an English letter (sometimes this vowel is sounded out - lack of consistency).

[A.]

My main complaint is that you have to learn the book's pronunciation guide on order to pronounce the words, instead of just learning to pronounce the Icelandic straight off.

[Andy]

I really appreciated the breakdown of useful phrases by event. It was also helpful because it meant phrases that were more common were repeated semi frequently, which should help with internalizing. The pronunciation help was also useful.