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Travel light with 30 WORDS language guides
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Slightly larger than a passport, “30 WORDS” guides can be carried anywhere. Photo by Miah Oren
Ever want to talk to a local in their language but don’t know what to say? “30 WORDS” language guides contain over 700 words and phrases with phonetic pronunciation to help you find the 30 words you need for most any travel situation. Andrew and Erin Kitchell, a brother-sister team, have turned bulky phrasebooks into “30 WORDS” lightweight language guides, making packing less stuff and communicating on a trip even easier. The Kitchells identified a need for easy-to-use language guides centered around simple sentence construction that allow you to travel light.
As long as you have the right 30 words, you can get by in most any situation. One side of the ten panel, accordion-folded guide contains key phrases and filler verbs, nouns, and adjectives that will easily allow you to create thousands of sentences. The other side consists of eight panels of color-coded words for different activities such as “Accommodations & Shopping,” “Food & Drink,” plus a note pad and a panel on medicine and medical information. The note pad is customizable with additional words from the “My 30” section of the website, but it also allows you to include words you learn along the way.
With this simple guide, not only are you greeting locals and ordering food, you are also telling the locals by your communication efforts that you value and respect their language, culture, and country enough to learn about them. A little language effort goes a long way toward making new friends.
While living in China I owned a phrasebook but only carried around a crumbled Chinese menu translation and one page of handwritten phrases. After only a few days these were falling apart, stained and hardly readable. Stains, tears, and other accidents will not be a problem for this guide. They come with a claim to be waterproof, stain proof, and tear proof. I could believe the smooth paper would repel rain and other liquids, but was very dubious of it being tear proof. So I sat and tried to tear it. It was a gentle effort at first along one of the folds – usually the easiest part to tear. I progressed to digging in my nails, stretching and every effort I could think of. Surprised and impressed, I looked at the website to find out what it was made of, and discovered that Andrew and Erin had gone much further than sitting in a coffee shop and trying to destruct it. See their blog for pictures of durability stress tests.
“30 WORDS” guides are currently available in European Spanish and South and Central American Spanish and can be ordered through their website. Mandarin Chinese will be available this summer, and there are plans for Vietnamese, Italian, and more. With a language guide in your pocket, you’ll be ready for any adventure.
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