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When to start using TL->TL dictionaries?

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12 messages over 2 pages: 1
James29
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5176 days ago

1265 posts - 2113 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: French

 
 Message 9 of 12
28 October 2012 at 11:32pm | IP Logged 
I like the monolingual dictionaries that are designed for foreigners. When I was in the Dominican Republic I saw a monolingual Spanish dictionary for "extranjeros." It was entirely in Spanish, but the explanations were all in fairly basic Spanish. When there was something too difficult to describe in basic Spanish they would often use a small picture to help. I was a beginner/intermediate at the time and I thought it looked like a very useful tool. I wish I bought it. I tried to find it in Amazon and could not find the one I was looking at. There are some others, however, that look similar.
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cheerbelle7
Triglot
Newbie
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4225 days ago

8 posts - 12 votes
Speaks: English*, Arabic (Levantine), French

 
 Message 10 of 12
03 November 2012 at 11:10pm | IP Logged 
Just my two cents, but I think it helps to switch over to the monolingual dictionary once you are at the level that you can start reading native language materials. If you can watch moview w/o subtitles and read books without translation, I think that you are ready to use the monolingual dictionary. It pushes you more to learn vocabulary from context which is a very important skill for all languages.
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DaraghM
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Ireland
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1947 posts - 2923 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian

 
 Message 11 of 12
06 November 2012 at 12:25pm | IP Logged 
There are some very good mono-lingual dictionaries for language learners. I'm currently using the following for French,

Dictionnaire du français langue étrangère

The dictionary gives example sentences for nearly every definition.

For Spanish, I really like the following,

El Pequeño Larousse Ilustrado 2011
Diccionario básico de uso de la lengua española

The Larousse isn't intended for learners, but is a very enjoyable and detailed encyclopedia with numerous pictures. The Diccionario básico is intended for learners and includes a number of verb conjugations. It's good, but nothing compared to the French dictionary.

Edited by DaraghM on 06 November 2012 at 12:49pm

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Iversen
Super Polyglot
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Denmark
berejst.dk
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9078 posts - 16473 votes 
Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan
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 Message 12 of 12
06 November 2012 at 4:56pm | IP Logged 
I sometimes use dictionaries on the internet which have a large number of example sentences for any given word, or I use Google to give me examples from real life. But one single example is not much - or more precisely formulated: if one example is enough then that word can't be a big problem. In cases where there are many construction possibilities and fixed expressions it is also nice to get each one explained and exemplified - but generally the precise demarcation of each variant is more useful than an isolated example. And with languages I don't understand very well I would always prefer having the explanation/translation in a language I understand realy well. As I have stated in other threads the only thing that can make me use a monolingual dictionary is the added information about morphology, syntax and idiomatics. An explanation in the same language that sent me to my bookshelf for instantaneous assistance will generally just add to the confusion.


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