Dictionaries for beginners

Dictionaries. As an old stager,.I thought some of the newcomers might find my experience useful, No doubt others have different ideas.
The first dictionary I turn to is usually
Oxford beginners Chinese dictionary. This is reasonably comprehensive; although I wish it were a little more so, especially the Chinese to English part. It gives quite a few example sentences using the word that you are looking up: a very useful feature. (NB It used to be called the Oxford Starter Chinese Dictionary – they added some cultural material and changed the name). I think this is the best dictionary to start with.

If that doesn’t work I usually turn to

Langenscheidt Pocket dictionary: Chinese. This is more comprehensive, especially Chinese to English, is easy to read but does not have much in the way of example sentences. I find it useful.

Then there are two dictionaries that are about equally useful
Collins Chinese Dictionary 2nd edition (very much better than the first edition)
Pocket Oxford Chinese Dictionary
Both are more comprehensive than the Beginners dictionary and give example sentences. For example, to illustrate one use of the word “least”, the Collins dictionary has a translation of the very useful sentence “I spotted my ex-wife, at least I thought I did”. However, these examples are often given as pairs of English/Chinese character sentences without the corresponding pinyin version. This makes them much more difficult to use. I only use these dictionaries if I can’t find what I want elsewhere.

However, some versions of the Pocket Oxford Chinese Dictionary come with an additional electronic dictionary that I have found enormously useful (Beware, it is not always sold with the dictionary). You can enter English, pinyin or Chinese characters and it will return all three, together with useful combinations. Also, you can click on any character and listen to the pronunciation of it. Well worth having.

There are many more advanced, and usually more expensive, dictionaries. But the above are perfectly adequate for beginners.

Thanks, Alan, for your detailed introduction of dictionaries. We do need a good dictionary to learn a language well.

Yesterday I visited Waterstone’s in Bloomsbury, London, where they have quite a large collection of Chinese language material. As a result, I can update my note about dictionaries.

Tuttle Learner’s Chinese-English Dictionary (cover price £19.99 or £13.19 at Amazon.co.uk) seems to have a similar scope and level of detail to the Oxford beginners Chinese dictionary (£10.99 or £7.14 at Amazon.co.uk). It looks a good alternative for the beginner. It is, however, organised differently: so it would probably take a few weeks regular use to say which one you preferred. My initial reaction is that it would probably be easier to use Tuttle in going from Chinese to English and Oxford in going from English to Chinese. I will try to report later.

Berlitz Mandarin Chinese Concise Dictionary is identical in content to the Langenscheidt Pocket dictionary: Chinese (£7.99 or £6.39 at Amazon.co.uk) discussed in the original note. The only difference is that it has a larger format, which makes it easier to read, but less easy to carry in your pocket. The Berlitz cover price is £10.99; it does not seem to be available at Amazon.co.uk but is available at Amazon.com for $10.85 (no doubt it would cost several more dollars to ship it from the USA).

Alan

Thanks, Alan