Dictionary Reviews

About 3 years ago I began to teach myself Italian using Gabrielle's book First Edition. I have recently been using the Second Edition and I find it to be so much better in the way it teaches the language and how the book is laid out. I like the expanded vocabulary list and glossary in the back of the book.

I think it is definitely worth the price for anyone who has the First Edition to upgrade.I did and my studies have definitely benefited.

Learning a new language is very daunting. There is not only an overwhelming amount of information to process, but then to memorize and recall in order to use correctly and communicate effectively on the spot say on some beautifully, cobblestoned via in Rome. It is intimidating. A new language is hard.
But, I had a very strong desire to be able to do just that. To go to Italy and be able to walk down the streets and stroll through the piazzas and experience this absolutely, amazing country with more than just my eyes. I wanted to be able to TALK with the people whom I have come to know as the most charming and generous people.
To learn the basics of the language, I used "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Learning Italian" by Gabrielle Euvino. The book takes what I found to be an overwhelming information and lays it out like a sumptuous smorgasbord. First the antipasti (appetizers)- rules, structure and tense- the basics. Then the primi piatti (first courses) some phrases and building on more layers of nuance that is the Italian language. Continuing right through contorni and secondi piatti, and finally dolci. All together, an Italian language feast! This book has given me a great foundation on which to continue to build my love for Italy and the language.
Do not be overwhelmed. Buy it, read it at a comfortable pace and before long you are amore Italia-in love with Italy.

I found Gabrielle Euvino's "The Complete Idiots Guide to Learning Italian", Second Edition useful and fun to read & work with. The vocabulary,phrases and situations presented are down to earth, very practical and surprisingly comprehensive & exhaustive.
Ms. Euvino's love for the Ialian language and culture is quite apparent throughout the book. It is a "can do" book anbd her enthusiam for learning Italian is contagious. A wonderful resource. I recommend it highly.
Henry Urbanksi, Ph.D,
Director,Language Immersion Institute
State University of New York at New Paltz

tan eficaz ni tan BARATA como Maribel Gutz... Y ESTE ES UNO DE SUS LIBROS !

for Latino people. They are intelligent, and they understand this book quite easily and it's an outstanding back up for my teaching !

in the marvelous books of Maribel Gutz... She's such a bright teacher and makes you feel that learning is no big deal!

This was ONE OF THOOSE BOOKS: May I reccomend "Inglés en un Mes " and "El Siguiente Mes de Inglés "?
They are truly wonderful !

This excellent small dictionary is up-to-date, has a fair number of Americanisms, and is easy on the eye. The blue highlights really do help you find the various senses of the words more readily. If you grow out of this one, move up to the big Oxford-Paravia dictionary, which www.Amazon.com sells at an outstanding price. (No, I don't work for www.Amazon.com, but I AM a maven of Italian-English teaching materials.)

This mini Italian dictionary is versatile. It is compact and up-to-date. Every word it translated is well-defined. Even special entries on both Italian slangs and culture were included.
It is a handy companion that one can depend on while travelling or studying. Users will appreciate how it conjugated many of the irregular verbs that are used in contemporary Italian.
It is a valuable pocket reference for learners and travellers alike.

This book is really neat. I love the COLOR, it makes things so much easier. It doesn't, however, have a section for slang phrases or anything like that, just strictly definitions. Now if you are like me, and are really new to Italian, sometimes it's hard for me to understand the meaning, because I haven't learned all of the forms of the verbs, but it does get me by in a pinch. Either way, I'm glad I bought it.

This book is going to allow me to pass the level 2 Japanese test. Buy this book for reference or study it as a textbook. Ive studied it the last 4 months and its made such a difference.
Good examples and simple explanations for all the little things. Perfect for intermediate students trying to be advanced.

First of all, you need both this book and the beginner's guide (Also available). The index in the back of this volume references both books and occasionally you will look up a grammar phrase and find it's in the blue beginner's volume.

Expensive, but a necessary reference. My main gripe is that it's sometimes not obvious how to look up a phrase and i spend a lot of time digging through index. A little standardization would help (Ex: yarou to suru... would you look this up under "you to suru", or "to suru", or "suru"?)

The appendices offer good usage info on topics as compound verbs and counters. I use it as an English counterpart to some of the japanese profieciency exam grammar reviews that are available in Japan in Japanese.

This is a great book as the Basic japanese grammar. it's well organized like an encyclopedia. having this book and the one before will cover most often used japanese grammars. one of the best grammar out there. very concise and useful for those who are serious about being fluent in japanese. no other book have i come across that is as easy to use and understand as this book. this book is like the bible of japanese grammar. Also get the Basic japanese grammar. it will give you a very strong foundation which is a must for those who love the japanese language.

I have been using this book for years, but I never had to learn anything that is in this book, being so amateur in philosophy that I don't have to trouble myself with the ideas for which most of the people in this book have become famous. I have usually expected things to be much simpler than the information which this book has to offer. It has nice definitions of some Greek and Latin words that I find meaningful, once I know what they are supposed to be about. On the Hebrew source of the word "Gehenna," the place used for "the city dump of Jerusalem" where fires burned constantly, the extra information, "according to tradition, [first-born] children had been sacrificed there to the god Moloch," provides a lot of insight into its use in The New Testament, where the King James Version often uses "hell."

For years, this book was my main source of information on Giordano Bruno (1548-1600). I suspect that it is right about "he was condemned to death, and burned alive in the Campo Dei Fiori on February 17, 1600." I have tried to make sense of a few of Bruno's books, like THE EXPULSION OF THE TRIUMPHANT BEAST, but I'm inclined to accept the list of main ideas in this dictionary as the sum of his accomplishments. Dying for the idea that "The universe is infinite" makes more sense than some of his monads, and "To consider reality in its multiplicity" is an achievement that I can appreciate.

On the other hand, the entry for Paul Tillich (1886-1965) illustrates a theologian's ability to distinguish "between three forms of reasoning~heteronymous, autonomous, and theonomous." I thought heteronymous would be pretty good, but Tillich thought that even "Autonomous reason takes its principles from within, but thereby reveals itself as vacuous and tautological." Being able to accept that Tillich would say that is part of being able to appreciate what this book is all about. I'm not saying that these guys are always right about anything.

This book saw me through many a philosophy course, and 8 years later I still find the need to use it for quick, concise cross-referencing of the major tenets of philosophy and religion. I actually won it in a bet while in college. It was the best bet I ever made, which speaks poorly of my gambling ability, but highly of this book.

Very handy if you forget who Thrasymachus was or what the 8 tennets of Buddhism were. Highly recommended for anyone studying philosophy.

In many ways my husband and I miss the 80's. We liked the music, the fashion and the way people were concerned with simple things like hygiene and attractive clothing. This book took us back to those happy carefree teenage years when things were good and we were nearly completely free of responsibility!! As we went through this book we had many good laughs and had fun remembering things long forgotten! I recommend this book if you liked the 80's and I recommend reading it with at least one other person who enjoyed that era! Fun book!

This book was as much fun as a barrel of smurfs...required reading for those of us with a Dukes of Hazard lunch box and a Battlestar Galactica sleeping bag in the closet...awaken the Chachi within!

If you ignore the book's ugly-as-sin cover artwork and delve into this maniacal volume of absolutely useless yet totally vital pop cultural information, you will be proud to say: "I am a member of the Chachi Generation." Buy it and love it.

Ok, so you're in your first year Latin course, or perhaps you're taking one of the on-line Latin courses offered (as I did). You have your Wheelock's, and Wheelock/LaFleur's explanations are not quite clear. What do you do?

Professor Grote to the rescue! He picks up where Wheelock leaves off and often approaches explanations from another angle. Don't get me wrong - Wheelock's and (especially) LaFleur's experience as Latin teachers comes through in their explanations. But the great virtue of Grote's book is that he can assume that the basic explanation and vocabulary has already been given in Wheelock, so he can focus on explanations that may help those of us who "just don't get it."

To be sure, Rick LaFleur adds some of these to Wheelock too, but Wheelock's would have to be 1,000 pages long to give this much explanation, and not all explanations are needed by all students. I did not need some of Grote's alternate explanations - but I'm sure somebody did. As an example, Wheelock explains the imperfect subjunctive as being "essentially" the present infinitive plus personal endings (essem/esses/esset/essemus/essetis/essent). Grote explains what Wheelock meant by "essentially". Perhaps not absolutely necessary to know, but a good way of remembering it.

The only thing I would change about this book is to have more vocabulary explanations. There are many vocabulary puzzles in Latin or any other language, and Grote helps with some of these (I love his line "Wheelock gives 'thing' as the primary definition of 'res' - well, forget that.") However, the ones included are few and far between, and in some cases I am sure that better and more necessary ones could be chosen.

But this is only a minor nit. This book is great, and I highly recommend that anybody who really wants to learn Latin through Wheelock's should get it. If you are still not sure, you can download an early version of Grote's notes (just do an Internet search for "grote wheelock study guide" and you'll find them). These are good for getting the flavor of Grote's book - for example in chapter 7: "Many people consider the third declension to be a pons asinorum - but I disagree."

The on-line version will keep you going until your purchased version arrives. But do buy the book - the on-line version has typos, and is for an old edition of Wheelock's, and only goes up to chapter 35. Besides, with such great explanations, I want to do everything I can to encourage Professor Grote!

Not many Latin teachers would dare say (after a couple of chapters): "Face it, any nitwit can read the five-word sentences you've been getting so far." (Then he goes on to make sure you really understand what the word "declension" means.)

Dale is grate.

I have been lucky enough to take Dale Grote's Latin class at UNCC and am very impressed by the lengths to which he goes to teach his students Latin in a fun, easy-to-understand way. A lot of his easy-going personality and style -- not to mention optimism -- comes through in the book. He truly shakes the dust off the old Wheelock book and makes Latin human again, not just a dead language. His whole approach to teaching is wonderful. I think he is fabulous.

This is an excellent book for beginners! My son was able to pick it up and immediately use it. The lessons are easy to understand. It is a well written book and was well worth the money. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn French.

I bought this book solely on Rick N's recommendation. He was right. The vocabulary is a little bit outdated in some cases, but the explanatory notes in the 20 lessons are incredibly helpful, and the grammar section alone justifies the price of the book. I don't recommend trying to learn any language without tapes or CDs, and as such cannot recommend that anyone tries to learn French with this book alone, but beginners who want to give this book a try will find that it will become the handiest reference work anyone can own. Knowing what I know now about this book, I'd have happily paid twice its price.

If you were to rip this book in half and just keep the reference grammar section, you'd still have a bargain. The twenty lessons are excellent and are also a bargain on their own. Compare this book to everything else on the shelves at your favorite bookstore, compare its price to the prices of the others, and you'll soon learn that by that scale any Cortina "20 lessons in Conversational (whatever language)..." is worth four times what it costs. The free tape they offer is merely a promo and not overly helpful, but the book is top notch. In short: the best bang for the buck out there, period.

This book has one thing most (as far as I can tell) classical mythology references don't have: PRONUNCIATION for every entry. It's clear and complete, with even obscure references, and includes main sources.

At any price, this is an excellent resource.

Whenever I want to know about anyone from Greek or Roman mythology, this is the first book I grab. They're all listed alphabetically & there is a satisfyingly concise description of each. Entries tend to be so short that this book is by no means the only one to read about mythology in, but it's an indispensible place to start.

This is quite possibly the best, inexpensive reference material ever. This is very good. The entries are clear and concise. The names have pronunciation guides and where they are mentioned. It also has entries over the authors who wrote the works. The entries also have cross-references to other entries in the book. The font of the book is clear and there is enough white space to where the words do not seem cluttered. While this may seem not that important, when you are having to look up a character very fast so you can respond to a question, you will be thankful. I have only one problem with this book. Some of the entries on the groups of characters, such as the muses, only reference you to the names of the characters, not what they did together as a group. Even with this, this book is something you can buy and not worry about making a wrong buy.

This is a great dictionary for those who have trouble putting together words and phrases common in many Ecclesiastical books such as the Vulgate Bible, the Latin Denzinger, and other Catholic books primarily in Latin. Although, I would not use this dictionary as your exclusive reference, it is handy to keep along with your regular Latin dictionary.

I bought this dictionary solely for reading the Latin Vulgate, for the on-line Vulgate reading group that I run. Although I have some knowledge of Greek, I wanted a good and easy-to-use resource that provides the Latin translations. This dictionary succeeds admirably, although you should have a decent basic Latin dictionary like Cassell's also. I have never found a word in the Vulgate that was not defined in either Cassell's or this dictionary. Even "problem words" (usually directly transliterated into Latin from Greek) are there - for example, "telonium".

In addition to good word coverage, it also explains idiomatic usages of words, especially with prepositions. Look at the example pages and you'll some examples of idiomatic uses of words with the preposition "ad".

If you want to read the Vulgate, neither Cassel's nor the Chambers-Murray dictionary will suffice. This is the only Latin-English dictionary I've seen that lists words from after the 5th century AD. It simply has no competition!