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A Question about the English-F-S-G Dict. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| blindsheep Triglot Senior Member Spain Joined 6345 days ago 503 posts - 507 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 1 of 6 13 July 2008 at 8:56am | IP Logged |
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Prof. Argüelles,
I recently purchased your dictionary (from www.ldlp.com, it arrived to Spain in under two weeks) and I just have a question about one of the symbols used in it that I wasn´t able to find a description for at the beginning of the dictionary. For many of the entries in German the plural is denoted with -¨e. I´m uncertain about what the ´¨´ part of that signifies. I´d like to say that I find the multiple entries based on differing means of each word quite excellent... indeed I wish more dictionaries would use such a style. Now I only wish I had versions of the dictionary that were F-E-S-G, S-E-F-G. amd G-E-F-S to complement it as I´m in the process of studying all three languages that are not English. Thank you and my complements on your work, S Prest Edited by blindsheep on 08 September 2008 at 7:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ChristopherB Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6301 days ago 851 posts - 1074 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French | Message 2 of 6 14 July 2008 at 1:16am | IP Logged |
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That simply refers to a noun which undergoes a vowel change in the plural, that is, it becomes umlauted.
A simple example is Baum to Bäume. There are, however, nouns which do not undergo this process, such as Name to Namen. Christopher Button 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7241 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 3 of 6 17 July 2008 at 7:36pm | IP Logged |
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Mr. Button, thank you for answering Mr. Prest's question.
Mr. Prest, thank you for your kind comments. I also wish the other versions were available. The F-E-S-G was actually in press when the bombs fell and nothing has happened since, and even the E-F-S-G version is sadly hard enough to come by. AA 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Zwlth Super Polyglot Senior Member United States Joined 5211 days ago 154 posts - 320 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Arabic (Written), Dutch, Swedish, Portuguese, Latin, French, Persian, Greek | Message 4 of 6 23 August 2011 at 9:01am | IP Logged |
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I thought I'd update this old thread because I've gotten my own copy more recently.
The link to it at the publisher's own site at Librairie du Liban has been under construction for some time. However, you can get it from Librairie Antoine for only US$20 + shipping, which in my case was another $30. Alternatively, you can get it already imported to the U.S. from this Amzaon Associate for $65. I hope this information helps someone who might like to get his or her own copy. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5305 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 5 of 6 23 August 2011 at 10:00am | IP Logged |
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According to the description "All words are accompanied by an entry that indicates their placement in an extensive thematic classificatory scheme."
I'm curious: did the author come up with his own "classificatory scheme" or does this description simply mean that each entry comes with register information and/or a sample sentence? Also how does it stack up to other multilingual dictionaries with more entries? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Zwlth Super Polyglot Senior Member United States Joined 5211 days ago 154 posts - 320 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Arabic (Written), Dutch, Swedish, Portuguese, Latin, French, Persian, Greek | Message 6 of 6 25 August 2011 at 6:29am | IP Logged |
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OK, I've got my copy open now and I'm looking at the explanations for the thematic classificatory index, which takes up about a dozen pages in the introduction. There are 21 main categories (nature, phenomenon, substance, etc.), each divided into many subcategories (astronomy, geography, botany, etc., etc., under nature). As the OP pointed out, an excellent and special feature of this dictionary is that there are separate entries for each word based on the different meanings of it, which this classificatory scheme furnishes. Also, there seems to be a plan to issue another version of the dictionary where this scheme rather than one of the four languages will provide the search words, so it would be a purely thematic quadrilingual dictionary where you could find all the words for astronomy, geography, botany, etc., together.
I've never seen another multilingual dictionary with more entries than this. In fact, most of the multilingual dictionaries I've seen have actually just been wordlists, while this is a highly detailed veritable dictionary. I don't think it can or should replace your set of bilingual dictionaries, but I also don't think that's its goal. The way I find it most useful is not for looking up new words, but for looking up words that I've forgotten how to say in one of the languages. Usually when I have to search my memory for one, it causes me to come up with a blank in the others as well. So, when I look it up here and get the right equivalent in all four, that forms a memory chain in all of them that makes it harder to forget again. In sum, a dictionary by a polyglot for polyglots. Well worth the acquisition. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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