Enjoy travelling? Learning the language for a one-week visit is not an option either and makes no sense. But what if you’d like to explore China from inside or any other place in the world where few people speak English? Lets say, you wanna visit Hong Kong and basic English knowledge is enough to communicate.
Have you ever tried to read a very foreign phrase from a phrasebook in a language you don’t understand? In fact, have you ever seen someone stand in a conversation and read from one in a way that’s been helpful? Maybe once you got to the front of a busy train ticket counter or at a market store.
In our travel (https://www.thaibounty.com/do-away-with-resort-for-good/) experience, we found that phrasebooks included far more language than we could ever reasonably use. Not really accurate sentences of course, but understandable to locals and easy in use. Twenty useful words can be used to make up a huge amount of combinations to express basic needs and wishes a traveler may have. That’s why we have created this tiny phrasebook that consists of just 20 words.
A huge part of travelling is about making connections with people who aren’t like you. A good friend of ours in Thailand has taken to saying nearly every meal he has is ‘delicious’ (aroi mak). That is in part because usually the meals are, and in part because saying something positive helps create a positive connection between you and your hosts far better than saying “my soup is cold.” So language tools should help people make these connections and it should be simple to find. Travelers would be better appreciated and they would have better connections with their hosts.
Sometimes, no matter how hard you try to pronounce something, you just don’t get the message through. While phrasebooks are usually in tiny text to create a portable package, in places where people can read, showing a written phrase in the local script to someone can really be the easiest way to get the message across. So we designed lexiconium, that is made to easily be twisted around, pointed too, and read by people from a short distance or who may not have great eyesight.
Have you ever tried to read a very foreign phrase from a phrasebook in a language you don’t understand? In fact, have you ever seen someone stand in a conversation and read from one in a way that’s been helpful? Maybe once you got to the front of a busy train ticket counter or at a market store.
