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Collins Easy Learning Dictionaries | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| tangleweeds Groupie United States Joined 3374 days ago 70 posts - 105 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Irish, French | Message 1 of 4 15 April 2015 at 9:10am | IP Logged | ||
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My roommate has the Collins Pocket French Dictionary, which is very nicely printed, with the
head words colored blue so they're easy to find. However it's too terse for my re-beginner needs, but I'm liking their style of color use and formatting. I was wondering whether Collins' Easy Learning line of dictionaries are the helpful kind for beginners, which have entries for confusing words like irregular verb forms, helpfully pointing you to the proper headword. I'd also be interested in hearing about the other Easy Learning lines from Collins: Grammars, Verbs. The specific languages I'm studying are Irish and French, but I'm also interested in general factors like helpful formatting, clean layout, and other usability issues. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| chaotic_thought Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 3341 days ago 129 posts - 274 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, French | Message 2 of 4 15 April 2015 at 1:12pm | IP Logged | ||
It depends on what you find "helpful for beginners". As a beginner while studying various languages, I've never found bilingual dictionaries helpful at all. (Bilingual texts, on the other hand are helpful). Some people seem to like bilingual dictionaries because they seem faster. But they also promote the kind of thinking that implies that there must necessarily exist some kind of "proper translation" of a French word X into their language. If I don't know the "proper translation" of this word then I must not know the "true meaning" of the word, right? In reality, translated vocabulary is often worse than unhelpful. For example, suppose I look up the French word tuer in a French-English dictionary and discover that it means kill in English. Well, that's nice. In English we say "kill the lights". Does that mean that I can say "Tuez-vous les lamps!" in French?? Translating vocabulary quite often leads to this form of utter nonsense. Sure, there are various ways to clarify things, but ultimately trying to enumerate exactly the situations where a word "x" in language A can productively be translated to a word "y" in language B is not a simple task. Bilingual dictionaries like to pretend that this translation task is simple or that the hand-waving process of replacing one word with another somehow automatically leads to a dictionary format that is more consise or easier to use. A good dictionary in my experience shows the words clearly how they are used, and should be written by experts in that domain and it should use the language that you're learning to explain the words themselves. The only English words appearing on the pages of the dictionary you are reading should be precisely those English words that are acutally used by speakers of that language themselves when they are talking to each other! It turns out that this is quite a few, which is yet another reason that translation dictionaries are worse than useless for the learning task. For example, the English word "okay" is also used in French. But the situations where I would say "okay" in English probably almost never correspond to situations where a French person would also use "okay" in the same situation while speaking French. In other words, the translation is valid but it totally fails to get you to the goal -- to properly understand how words are used in French and what they actually mean in that context. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5107 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 3 of 4 15 April 2015 at 2:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Extracted below are my notes on the Collins books. Note, though, I borrowed all these free of charge from the library, so price was not a factor.
(Rating: minimum 0, pass 2.5, maximum 5.0) ---------- Collins Italian Grammar & Practice 2012 Rating 5 NOT COMPLETE BUT MANY SIMPLE SENTENCES. Collins French Grammar 2004 Rating 3 VERY LITTLE CONTENT Collins French Words 2006 Rating 5 Collins gem Italian Phrase Finder 1993 Rating 4 Collins Easy French LOTS OF PHOTOS AND SIGNS Collins Easy Spanish 2006 Raing 5 LOTS OF PHOTOS OF SIGNS N NOTICES. ---------- The 1st 2 books cover very little grammar, and does so in a simplified way. (I'm not saying that's bad, I did give the first book a 5 out of 5). (I gave the 2nd book 3 out of 5 because it was far too easy for me. It might suit those who only want to learn just the most essential grammar). The last 2 books, as I remember, are pocket books for tourists, full of realia - photos of vending machines, road signs, bank notes and coins, etc. you get to see how words are used in real life, eg. you'd see that public toilets are labelled "Gentlemen" instead of "male" or "boy" or whatnot. These 2 books were very interesting to read. Edited by smallwhite on 15 April 2015 at 2:33pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tangleweeds Groupie United States Joined 3374 days ago 70 posts - 105 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Irish, French | Message 4 of 4 15 April 2015 at 11:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks smallwhite, all those details were super helpful. Collins language books come from
Harper Collins UK, and don't seem to have much of a presence here in the US. So my browsing options are limited. Our local library is very good, but they have only a couple of old Collins titles, and Amazon (US) doesn't carry them except as Kindle books. I've had to explore the selection via the Book Depository, which doesn't give much more info than a publisher's blurb.
The person described here would have to be pretty naive, don't you think? Seriously, though, there's a bootstrapping problem when saying that a beginner should be using dictionaries and grammars written in their target language by experts, in spite of being as yet unable to read educated-adult level material (or much at all yet) in the target language. I'm about as raw a beginner as one can be in Irish, and my French is 35+ years rusty. I'm looking for dictionary that can field oddball irregular verb forms, prepositional pronouns in Irish, etc, and is therefore useful for the beginner who is reading a bit ahead of their current level of knowledge. I also like reference books, and can get sucked into reading a dictionary or grammar book for fun (yes I'm a dork like that), which is why I'm curious about the other books in this series too. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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