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| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6943 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes  Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 49 of 70 14 August 2007 at 10:00am | IP Logged | |||||
The dictionary one needs also depends on the texts one wants to tackle. Lagenscheidt's Pocket dictionary is very good and will take me quite a while to "outgrow", but it may still not be enough to read a 19th century novel "intensively", i.e., in full detail - most of the words I don't know will be there, but some won't be, and for those that are, one may need additional meanings and idioms to figure out what the text is saying with comfortable precision.
I realized that iFinger has what seems like a larger Pons dictionary than the one carried by Babylon. It also comes with a free trial. ("German" must be in lower case in the URL). P.S. I also use Leo and/or dict.cc occasionally, but they don't work that well for me - I like the definitions to be grouped like in regular dictionaries. Edited by frenkeld on 14 August 2007 at 11:22am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6943 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 50 of 70 22 August 2007 at 12:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
Andy, The above-quoted information may not have been right. After poking around Babylon some more, I found the following comment: "Langenscheidt English-German-English Add-On Langenscheidt Handwörterbuch English (English-German-English). The dictionary contains up to 245,000 entries and includes terms, usage and examples. Annual subscription for 12 months. The use of a Babylon licence (at least version 4.0) is required." This refers to "Handwörterbuch", not "Standard". Going to Langenscheidt's list of German-English dictionaries (here is a shorter list of just the electronic ones), one does find a Handwörterbuch there, and it seems only a step below their Langenscheidt-Collins Großwörterbuch. Both are available in electronic (downloadable) form. So, what Babylon offers may be more substantial than the "Standard" Langenscheidt I was talking about, although it's likely not their biggest, which would be "Großwörterbuch" and perhaps "Muriet-Sanders". They have something called Standard for Palm and PocketPC, but I am pretty lost in their line of products by now to be sure what that might refer to. :) (Both of these seem to be available in trial versions.) In any case, between the Langenscheidt sites above, the Brockhaus-Duden "Downloadshop", as well as Babylon and iFinger, one can definitely find a suitable electronic dictionary. It's worth looking at the reviews of the CD-ROM versions of these products on Amazon.de before buying. The reviews of electronic Oxford-Duden and Langenscheidt-Collins are here: Oxford-Duden, Langenscheidt-Collins. Also, to test Langenscheidt software interface, if not specific dicitonaries, go to this page. P.S. You already know most of the above - I am repeating it for the benefit of others who might be shopping for an electronic German dictionary. P.P.S. I ended up getting Babylon+Wahrig (monolingual), as well as unabridged Oxford-Duden. The interface and the general software quality of the latter are almost as bad as the Amazon reviews say (no lemmatiser, it's more like having a paper dictionary on-screen, where you look for words in their original form by typing them in), but I knew what I was getting into after reading the reviews, and I already have a pop-up iFinger Concise Oxford-Duden, which does most of the work together with monolingual Wahrig from Babylon and Babylon's free German-English dictionary (the latter can be sometimes helpful too). [Added: Actually, the unabridged Oxford-Duden interface is growing on me, after upgrading to the latest version and as I am learning its features - it's still faster than handling a paper dictionary, although not a match for a good pop-up dictionary.] I am holding off on Langenscheidt-Collins for now - my hope is to go monolingual before I start feeling the need for it, but we'll see. If I were starting from scratch, Langenscheidt-Collins would've been a strong, if somewhat pricey, candidate, although I would've still been hard-pressed to give up my iFinger, whose entries have the most pleasant layout I've seen so far. Edited by frenkeld on 26 August 2007 at 5:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6943 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 51 of 70 31 August 2007 at 8:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
After poking around some more, I think I now have a better understanding of Langenscheidt's line of electronic (and paper) dictionaries. Part of the confusion was due to the fact that the dictionary published in Germany under the name of "Langenscheidt Taschenwörterbuch Englisch" does not seem to correspond to the "Langenscheidt Pocket Dictionary German" sold in the US market, but rather corresponds to the "Standard" and/or "Compact" dictionaries sold in the US. First some of their the products on the US market (some of these may be out of print): Langenscheidt's Pocket Dictionary German. The important fact is that it claims "over 55,000 references" on the back. Langenscheid'ts Standard Dictonary German. This one claims "over 120,000 references". To add to the confusion there is also Langenscheidt's Compact Dictionary German. This one also claims "over 120,000 references" and is in fact a reduced-size (smaller type) version of the "Standard" one above. Now, the likely corresponding products on the German market: Langenscheidt e-Euro Wörterbuch claims "bis zu 50.000 Stichwörter und Wendungen", which likely corresponds to the US-market "Pocket" dictionary. Langenscheidt e-Taschenwörterbuch claims "bis zu 130.000 Stichwörter und Wendungen", which likely corresponds to the "Standard"/"Compact" one on the US market. The next two entries, Langenscheidt e-Handwörterbüch and Langenscheidt Collins e-Großwörterbuch Englisch claim 270,000 and 350,000 "Stichwörter und Wendungen", respectively, so one can thing of them as some sort of "College" and "Unabridged" dictionaries. Another thing that confused me before was their Langenscheidt Standard-Wörterbuch Englisch for Palm and PocketPC, which claims "rund 350.000 Stichwörter, Wendungen und Übersetzungen", so in this case they seem to count differently from the above. However, one can make out in the picture on that page that the dictionary is based on "Taschenwörterbuch", which agrees in the "reference" count of the "Standard" dictionary in the US market as well. So, I am guessing "bis zu 130.000 Stichwörter und Wendungen" in this case, the rest being "Übersetzungen". I must say, so far I've found the "Standard" paper dictionary quite adequate for reading simple modern novels in German, although not quite for the classics. If I had a Palm or PocketPC device, I would therefore certainly consider getting the above-mentioned "Standard" electronic dictionary for them, although for PC I would've bought the "Großwörterbuch", and would've probably been content enough with the "Handwörterbuch", if the cost difference were a consideration. Some of these products are sold for less in CD versions on Amazon.de than one pays for their download versions, but Amazon.de won't ship software abroad, so this option is not available to everyone. I guess I may as well mention how I've been studying German. When at the computer, I either read a novel by Theodor Fontane (19-th century stuff, with vocab up the wazoo) or read the reviews of various books and DVD's on Amazon.de. I use an iFinger pop-up dictionary based on Oxford-Duden Concise for that, supplementing when needed with Babylon's free German-English dictionary and Babylon-based monolingual Wahrig, which I "cheat" with by freely clicking around with bilingual iFinger to help me understand the monolingual entries - the idea is to start getting used to a monolingual dictionary early on, and sometimes that's the only way to find the word or the particular meaning I am looking for anyway. Inspired by LingQ, I wrote an MS Word macro that highlights all occurrences of a word throughout the text (but not across different files, so I just put a few novels in one file), and I've been highlighting the words I look up, but without recording them anywhere. In addition, I had ordered several novels of the "Chick Lit" variety, with plenty of modern dialog, from Amazon.de, and am reading the first one in bed at night or when running around town, using mostly the small Langenscheidt Pocket dictionary, with the "Standard" one kept on hand as a backup. I do not record the new words in this case either. Things seem to be moving along OK. If necessary, I will start recording the new words, but so far I do not feel the need to do that. Either way, I have plenty to read for a number of months. Edited by frenkeld on 02 October 2007 at 5:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6943 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 52 of 70 12 October 2007 at 12:34am | IP Logged | |||||
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As can be seen from several preceding posts in this thread, I found the instant gratification of downloadable German e-dictionaries rather irresistible, so I added another one to my collection, this time it is Langenscheidt e-Großwörterbuch Deutsch als Fremdsprache, a monolingual dictionary with simplified definitions for learners of German as a second language. It has good reviews on Amazon.de, and so far I concur, both in terms of the software interface quality, including a well-designed pop-up capability, and the content. Its price is also quite reasonable.
As an aside, in the "reference" mode, i.e., the non-pop up one, I was able to import the full-size bilingual electronic Duden-Oxford dictionary from Duden into the Langenscheidt software interface, and vice versa, and I also got both to work under Linux using Wine (Windows Emulator), so I can quickly switch between bilingual and monolingual definitions under the same interface, and do so both in Windows and in Linux. (This unadvertised mutual interoperability between the Duden and Langenscheidt dictionary formats may have gone away in Duden's latest version of the software available for download to the owners of prior versions, and getting either one to run under Linux was very much touch and go, so none of these rather unexpected useful features should be regarded as "stable", nor be counted on at all when making your purchasing decisions. You have been warned!) As far as the actual study of German, I have been reading paperback novels lately. Over the last month or so, I've read one simple short sci-fi novel, in the original German, from the 1950's without a dictionary, which was only possible because it was, well, simple, and I've just finished my first run-of-the-mill full-length contemporary novel looking up a lot of words in a dictionary, but without recording them anywhere. This seems to have worked out well so far as a compromise between context-only vocabulary acquisition and the flashcard/notebook drudgery. I started on another novel a couple of days ago and have been able to read it without a dictionary so far. Hopefully, this means that I am finally entering the phase where a lot of learning can be from context. If not, I don't really mind looking up words, so I can always fall back on using a dictionary with the next novel. (An alternating pattern, from novel to novel, of context-only and vocabulary-assisted reading is another approach that may be worth considering.) Edited by frenkeld on 12 October 2007 at 11:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Linguamor Decaglot Senior Member United States Joined 6618 days ago 469 posts - 599 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch | Message 53 of 70 12 October 2007 at 2:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
Looking up words in a dictionary while reading, without recording them or studying them, has been my primary way of learning words from reading. I have found this very effective for learning to read quickly. Doing it this way also has the advantage that words that are encountered more often are learned before words that are encountered less often. This means the more important words are learned earlier automatically, without the language learner having to try to determine which words to learn and in what order. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6943 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 54 of 70 12 October 2007 at 11:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Linguamor,
Do you look up all the words when you read like this? If not, do you have a strategy for which words to look up? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Linguamor Decaglot Senior Member United States Joined 6618 days ago 469 posts - 599 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch | Message 55 of 70 13 October 2007 at 1:39am | IP Logged | |||||
At first I looked up all the unknown words I encountered while reading, even words that I understood from context - I just couldn't resist looking up a word to confirm that I had understood it. Later I decided to resist the temptation to look up every word, and to only look up words that I did not understand from context. I also began to read without looking up words, varying my strategy between looking up words while reading, and reading without looking up words. I also added a third strategy, looking up some words that I did not understand from context, and not looking up others. I think this is perhaps the best strategy - though I never established any clear-cut and consistent criteria for which words to look up, and as I read I found that I tended to increase the number of words I looked up. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6943 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 56 of 70 01 November 2007 at 11:28am | IP Logged | |||||
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I finished two light-genre German novels, in hard copy, since my last report, including the one I had just started on at the time. One of them had indeed proven to be easy enough to follow the plot without a dictionary, but I had to use a dictionary with the other one, as is also the case with the new one I started on a couple of days ago.
I've been mulling over whether it is time to try to eliminate bilingual dictionaries. So far I've been using a bilingual Oxford-Duden and Langenscheidt learner's monolingual under the same interface, typically starting with the monolingual definition of a word, but then often clicking on the Oxford-Duden icon to see the bilingual entry as well. There are times when the monolingual definition would've taken too much work to understand, but there are also times when it is sufficient. I think I will try going fully monolingual for a couple of days and assess the ensuing level of pain. The general plan is to read a few more novels and then pick a couple for a more careful second reading. I have also started reading a beginner/intermediate grammar book "1001 Pitfalls in German", but grammar study will remain low priority for now, so as not to interfere with reading and vocabulary acquisition. Edited by frenkeld on 01 November 2007 at 11:32am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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