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Words to test for dictionary quality | ||
Tags: Dictionaries | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6153 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 1 of 9 07 February 2014 at 4:24pm | IP Logged |
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What words do you use to test how good a dictionary is in terms of coverage and quality ? My quick check words are,
Spanish: Obraje – Timberyard\Sawmill. Oddly this word in in my small VOX monolingual dictionary, but not my more substantial RAE monolingual dictionary. French: Hourdis – Pre-fabricated hollow slabs. I’ve only found this word in the large Petit Robert, even though it showed up in a B2 rated article. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| osoymar Tetraglot Pro Member United States Joined 4738 days ago 190 posts - 344 votes Speaks: English*, German, Portuguese, Japanese Studies: Spanish, French Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 9 07 February 2014 at 6:42pm | IP Logged |
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I do look up certain words to test the usefulness of a dictionary, but I have a different
strategy- instead of relatively obscure words I generally look for a very common word likely to have multiple translations, like "put" or "even." Dictionaries that simply list a number of common translations without giving me any guidance as to their usage are no use to me. Dictionaries that clearly delineate the usage of the various translations, as well as regional preferences, and on top of that include idioms and expressions, are fantastic. That's just personal preference, of course. I would rather a dictionary have extensive notes on usage than extensive entries. 11 persons have voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 9 07 February 2014 at 8:25pm | IP Logged |
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I share osoymar's taste in dictionaries, but the ideal situation is to have a midsize dictionary which still is handy for daily use and a reserve mega monster dictionary for the really hard stuff.
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| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7158 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 4 of 9 07 February 2014 at 9:06pm | IP Logged |
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For any bilingual dictionary of a Slavonic language, I look for hints about inflection, case governance and information about prosody in the headword (latter applicable to languages with mobile stress), in addition to the quality and quantity of example sentences.
I usually pick as the representative words the reflexes of *čitati "to read" and *kъniga "book" to see how nouns/adjectives and verbs respectively are treated. "Good" examples using the Polish-English section of a dictionary are the following: - czytać impf. (pf. przeczytać) (-am, -asz) "to read" - c. na głos "to read aloud", c. książkę "to read a book" etc. - książka f. (gen sg. książki, nom pl. książki) "book" czytać/pisać książkę "to read/write a book" etc. (the case governance comes out in the example sentences with książkę being accusative, so it's not always necessary for me to have the case governance made that explicit). If this were a Russian-English, Ukrainian-English or BCMS/SC-English dictionary, I would look for markings that indicate stress placement, in addition to inflectional hints. It's not about the words themselves but the quality of the entries, as well as the overall size/coverage of the dictionary (all else equal, I expect a bilingual dictionary boasting 100,000 entries to have more obscure entries or low-frequency items than one with 20,000 entries). 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| yantai_scot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4804 days ago 157 posts - 214 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 5 of 9 07 February 2014 at 11:42pm | IP Logged |
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My adult beginner friendly Collins Easy Learning German Dictionary is starting to show
its limitations in less than a year of evening classes. I'm finding myself having to be creative in my choice of English in order to find the correct German word. It's been very helpful for getting to know about the peculiarities of a German dictionary and for easy strong verb conjugation checks but it'll be heading to Oxfam before the end of term and a Langenscheidt's compact dictionary being ordered instead. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5562 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 6 of 9 08 February 2014 at 2:59am | IP Logged |
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Off topic question. I've noticed German dictionaries never repeat the headword in the text: if it appears unchanged, they just use the initial and full stop, and if it's a variation on the haedword, they use a squiggly dash plus the suffix etc. Obviously it saves space, but I find it quite annoying to read, especially as it is unnecessary with an e-dictionary. I suppose I shall get used to it.
Anyway, I don't recall that English or French dictionaries do that, but do they do it in other countries? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6599 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 7 of 9 08 February 2014 at 6:29am | IP Logged |
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Yes, it's done like that in Russia. I kinda have a feeling that the Russian and German lexicographical traditions are quite similar.
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| yantai_scot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4804 days ago 157 posts - 214 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 8 of 9 09 February 2014 at 12:14am | IP Logged |
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Ooh. I quite like it with the just the letter changes. Nice and straightforward. Good to
hear that Russian is the same. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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