In order to use this book most effectively, it is helpful to read the section on pronunciation. This chapter provides charts for pronunciation of the English transliteration, which allows you to "speak" Russian without knowing the Cyrillic alphabet. Once you are familiar with the pronunciation, look over the chapter Essential Expressions, which lists useful, every-day phrases. Each successive chapter covers basic words, phrases and concepts most often encountered by travelers to Russia in typical daily situations. The penultimate chapter on Numbers helps you make sense of the Russian number system and provides frequently used time expressions. The final chapter offers reference information such as holidays, weather, metric conversions and other practical information.
