While on vacation in Seattle, Washington I visited a local Barnes & Noble bookstore. The first thing I always do is check out the section that has the Spanish books. While browsing through the titles I discovered a useful pocket-sized dictionary on medical Spanish. The guide is especially handy for retirees who have medical issues and do not speak fluent Spanish.

The dictionary is called “Vox Super-Mini MEDICAL Spanish and English” and is published by McGraw Hill. It can help you find the Spanish words and phrases you need when communication is critical. This guide gives you easy access to essential words that are used in most medical situations. It contains over 12,000 entries , 10, 000 subentries and more than 150 phrases.

Many doctors and paramedics speak English in Costa Rica but you cannot assume that everyone is bilingual. So a dictionary like this one is a very import tool to have if you live here. Communication can be the difference between life and death in some situations.

I also have a couple of Spanish-English/English-Spanish legal dictionaries in my library. They have come in handy on many occasions to help decipher the country’s convoluted legal jargon. I recommend that retirees and others have at least one legal dictionary if they plan to live in Costa Rica or any other Spanish speaking country.