Today, over 220 million people around the world speak Russian. Despite popular misconceptions, it is not a difficult language to learn, and even those with no prior experience will be able to communicate with the aid of this unique dictionary and phrasebook. In addition to a comprehensive listing of commonly used phrases and expressions, it features a Russian-English/ English-Russian dictionary containing approximately 4,000 entries. Each entry is transliterated for easy on-the-spot pronunciation, and a separate pronunciation section provides charts for the English transliteration, allowing users to speak understandably without any knowledge of the Cyrillic alphabet. A section entitled "Essential Expressions" lists useful, everyday phrases. Each successive chapter covers basic words, phrases, and concepts most often encountered by travelers to Russia in typical daily situations. The penultimate chapter helps to make sense of the Russian number system, and provides frequently used time-related expressions. The final chapter offers reference on subjects such as holidays, weather, metric conversions and other practical information.