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Does anyone collect foreign dictionaries? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| tracker465 Senior Member United States Joined 5352 days ago 355 posts - 496 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 1 of 16 14 April 2010 at 1:33am | IP Logged |
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As my interest for foreign languages started spiraling out of control, I began collecting dictionaries. If I go to a book sale or someplace where English/Foreign Language dictionaries are being sold, I’ll usually grab dictionaries for languages I do not have, or upgrade if I find a dictionary to be nicer than one I already own. If I am actively studying a language, then maybe I’ll grab a second if I find one priced cheaply, as my first is bound to become destroyed through constant use.
I also have a small collection of single language dictionaries, which I either found at yard sales and the like, or when I visited a country. Dialect dictionaries and dictionaries for minority languages really interest me, though I guess the hunt is part of the fun for me as well. I won’t usually buy a full-priced dictionary for a language which I am not actively studying, but if I stumble upon one at reduced price, then maybe I’ll add it to the collection. Does anyone else collect dictionaries? I am usually not in the right kind of company to make such confessions, but surely someone else has this hobby as well. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Delodephius Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 5403 days ago 342 posts - 501 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 2 of 16 14 April 2010 at 1:44am | IP Logged |
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I do, apparently. I started with just buying dictionaries for languages I was studying in school or at college, but then I found out I suddenly had a good number of them. So yeah, I am collecting dictionaries since I plan to get a lot more. So far they are all in Serbo-Croatian to and/or from another language: Slovak, Russian, Polish, Latin, Ancient Greek, Italian and Japanese. I also have a multilingual dictionary of eight languages: English, Swedish, Dutch, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Croatian. It can be used in all directions. I also have a one language dictionary of Slovak and one of Russian orthography. Edited by Delodephius on 14 April 2010 at 1:45am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7156 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 3 of 16 14 April 2010 at 2:19am | IP Logged |
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It's not so much a hobby for me as much as a bit of an addiction. In my case I'm apt to buy reference material for languages that interest me regardless of whether I am actually studying that language or not. On my last half-dozen or so trips through Europe, my bags have come back at least a few pounds heavier because of the dictionaries or other books that I acquire. However I'm not likely to make a whimsical purchase of material for a language which does not interest no matter how low its price is.
Someday my collection of material may begin to rival that of Iversen. One can dream, huh? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| goosefrabbas Triglot Pro Member United States Joined 6368 days ago 393 posts - 475 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German, Italian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 16 14 April 2010 at 6:02am | IP Logged |
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I "collect" language courses. My Assimil and TY collections in particular are pretty impressive (in my opinion, at least).
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| pohaku Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5651 days ago 192 posts - 367 votes Speaks: English*, Persian Studies: Arabic (classical), French, German, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 5 of 16 14 April 2010 at 6:21am | IP Logged |
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Oh, yes, I have dictionaries and other materials for all sorts of languages that I am not studying, and many that I will surely never study. If I find a bargain, I'll buy it. But if I see an apparently well-done volume, I buy it as an object of veneration. All of mine are mated with English. Among the less common ones I have Armenian, Latvian, Hungarian, Albanian, Czech, Polish, Finnish, and Old Icelandic. I just started working on Bengali, but I already have three dictionaries. And I'm pretty sure I'll soon have Welsh and Irish, since discovering their treasure trove of 8-15th c. literature. I've never studied any Celtic language at all, but I've been perusing Dafydd ap Gwilym's Welsh poetry recently with a grammar in one hand, a dictionary in the other, and a translation on the side. If I do that for a hundred days, even if just for a half-hour per day, I'm bound to know somthing, thus justifying my purchase of another dictionary.
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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 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 6 of 16 14 April 2010 at 8:08am | IP Logged |
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I can't pretend that I haven't got a few dictionaries and grammars (se photo 9.april 2009 in my log), and of course the collection contains a few books pertaining to languages which I haven't had time to learn yet (such as Albanian, Basque and a number of Slavic languages). But I bought a number of books, for instance the good old Teach Yourself's around 1980, before I stopped learning languages, and they were a valuable resource when I started to learn for instance Greek and relearn Romanian after 2006. So ... better buy it while it is there (TY has never been the same since the 80s). The only thing I don't buy is dictionaries in Chinese and Japanese because I wouldn't know how to look up anything in them. Edited by Iversen on 14 April 2010 at 6:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| vb Octoglot Senior Member Afghanistan Joined 6422 days ago 112 posts - 135 votes Speaks: English, Romanian, French, Polish, Dutch, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Russian, Swedish | Message 7 of 16 14 April 2010 at 9:49am | IP Logged |
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I've got quite a few dictionaries but many more language courses, as a second-hand course in an obscure language tends to be cheaper than a dictionary (my best finds are a 'Course in Tswana' and one on 'An Outline of the Franco-Norman Dialect of Guernsey'). The most exotic dictionaries that I have are no more exciting than Lithuanian, Vietnamese, Maltese to English.
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| global_gizzy Senior Member United States maxcollege.blogspot. Joined 5703 days ago 275 posts - 310 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 16 14 April 2010 at 9:11pm | IP Logged |
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No, I dont collect dictionaries. I have a couple of childrens books in Spanish, one in German, and one in Arabic. I guess I collect childrens books, if anything. My father collects Qurans in various languages. I'd like to get Bibles in various languages and build my International Childrens library. I guess I'm not sophisticated enough to do "big kid" text's but oh well.
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