Dictionary Reviews

Terrific for quick reference, and very helpful to help anyone who is teaching Bible lessons,etc. I think everyone would find this book a must have. Our young people find the Bible confusing, this will help them also, so many times through out the Bible, names are repeated, or sounds the same. This book really, really goes hand in hand with reading the Bible. Great for all ages, we can never learn enough, no matter how many times we read the Bible, but this book helps explain who we are reading about. I'd rate it 10+. Hope this helps.
Jeanette Storaska

From Aaron to Paul, Adam to Mary, Achan to Judas, Dr. Motyer gives us a great picture of the biblical world, from the temptation and fall to the missionary journeys of Paul, this book is filled with comprehensive information that make you want to read it again and again! A fantastic book!

No mysteries to this title. It does exactly what it says. It explains who's who in a very logical manner. Don't let the number of pages fool ya'...every page is packed with info and illustrations! I especially enjoyed the range of art work used (different mediums, styles). This is NOT your typical reference book. I thought of placing it on the shelf between the dictionary and the encylopedias, but it is used more often than those! It is an instant favorite with the kids. They are facinated with the meanings of the names listed with other interesting facts, such as to whom they are related,where they can be found in the Bible and short paraphrases about their role in the Bible. Lastly I must say that I am glad it is a hard back book because I know it will see a lot of wear.

This is not as specialized a reference work as you would suspect from the title. The six introductory articles are among the best I have read on the development of the canon, hermeneutics, and the status of biblical scholarship. These run a mere ten or sixteen columns each, yet feel comprehensive. They reveal the editors' infatutuation with statistical information (numbers of male named in the Bible vs. the number of females; the number of named women vs. the number of unnamed women; names that recur most frequently, etc.), and their interest in exploring what these statistics hint at. Clearly the editors and authors enjoyed creating this landmark publication. While the authors are not timid scholars, they seem to know when they have reached a dead end or hit an informational barrier. When the Bible is silent on an issue, they are comfortable acknowledging it.

Also worth praising is the organization of the book. Part I consists of all the women named in the Bible (including the Deuterocanonical/Apocryphal books) in alphabetical order; Part II lists all the unnamed women (or groups of women, such as, "Daughters of Lot" and "Women at Vashti's Banquet") in Bible book order (following the NRSV sequencing) by their earliest significant Scripture reference; Part III, perhaps the most fascinating section, is a compilation of female deities and personifications (such as, "Asherah/Asherim," "Female Images of God in the Hebrew Bible," "Woman Wisdom," and "No 'Male and Female' in Christ Jesus"). While great care has been made in providing cross-referencing, there is no general index to the volume. Readers will need to be very intuitive (and perhaps keep a concordance handy) if they want to find entries in Part II (the largest section of the book) by any method other than Bible book order. The volume is completed by an annotated listing of "Additional Ancient Sources," which directs the reader to some important texts that never made it successfully through the maze known as canonization, but which are sure to provide some interesting information on the status and role of women at different points in the ancient world.

Women in Scripture is just the resource I have been waiting for; in one volume I can find brief, but thorough, well written articles on all the women of the Bible, which incorporate the insights of the best of contemporary critical biblical scholarship. And don't miss the introductory articles. They are worth the price of this book by themselves. This book is a must for all pastors, serious Bible students, and all laypersons interested in learning about the women of the Bible as they are presented in the Bible, not as they have been culturally presented. I highly recommend it!

Leading Biblical scholars provide the best, latest scholarship on biblical women and provides an important volume bringing together the works of over seventy scholars who provide entries on over two hundred named and six hundred unnamed women. All the women of the Bible, from deities to personifications of symbols, are represented in a fine dictionary reference.

By the authors of SIDE BY SIDE this is a much more colorful and better organized picture dictionary than the formerly more popular OXFORD PICTURE DICTIONARY. Whenever I bring it to class, if the students don't have it, the first thing atleast 70% will ask me is "Where can I get it ?" - - used with the accompanying flash cards (not included) you can teach entire (and substantive) lessons with just those two things alone... and even without it, you can use it to expand amply from whatever text book you're using. The chapters on the household, occupations, places around town, work activities are especially useful. In my begining classes we learn how to ask each other questions about these subjects, and begin all our classes discussing what we did over the weekend, what we did at work etc. etc. We talk about our house, our family... and all these topics are with Level 1 students, eye to eye (pair work, group work, class discussion)and facilitated by lessons from this book. - - Pictures get students talking and open them up and this is the ultimate resource ! ! !

As a tip, the students love looking at the pictures and discussing them, so to keep activities interactive, have students share books... or make worksheets where the students have to exchange information ! ! !

Illustrations are somewhat dated and the colors on some pages need to be sharper but the book is quite thorough and a great pictionary overall.

If I could have only one ESL reference tool in my classroom, it would be the Word by Word Picture Dictionary. This book is an invaluable resource in all ESL/EFL settings--from beginning to advanced, from pre-school through adult, in the U.S. and abroad.

We have placed a copy of this book in every classroom. I also encourage all incoming students to make this one of their first purchases. Indeed, Word by Word Picture Dictionary has quickly become the core of our curriculum.

As a Reading Specialist, I know only too well that although students can learn to read quite easily when taught with an effective reading method, most of them have great difficulty dealing with spelling. This is due to the fact that reading requires simple "recognition" of a word - but spelling requires "total recall." For example, most people can read the word "chrysanthemum, but they can't spell it. Try it yourself - look away from the screen and try to spell that word. That is why WORD FINDER has been a Godsend, not only for the students, but (I must admit) for myself as well. It saves valuable time trying to search out the spelling of a word in the dictionary, many times which can't be located because the spelling is so irregular. WORD FINDER gets you right to the target simply by supplying the consonant sounds in the word - and presto! - you have the spelling! It's an ingenious idea and I wonder why someone hadn't thought of it sooner. This book has become so indispensable that I have included it as a reference in the latest printing of my book, At Last! A Reading Method for Every Child, in order to share this gem with teachers, students, and parents. It's a MUST HAVE!

This phonic, consonant-only dictionary is a life-saver for some people who can pronounce words but simply cannot figure the spelling. Some people cannot use a computer spellcheck because they have no visual sense of a word; some don't know where to start with a dictionary. For people who readily recognize consonant sounds this is a gift.

A must for people with spelling problems! Using phonetic sounds of consonants only, the reader looks up the word's "code" and finds the correct spelling underneath. For example, sklj=psychology, shfr=chauffeur. Homophones are defined, i.e. pk= peak (highest),peek (look), pique (offend)

Mozeson is a genius and makes us wonder if , after all, we are not one humanity on one planet and even speak the same language.

The Word demonstrates how totally saturated English is with Biblical Hebrew roots. (As all languages are). Some words like LAD are given an Origin Unknown in the standard dictionaries. Mozeson shows how the root for young child, YeLeD, is the probable source. YeLeD iself contains the root meaning born. So now English has sense if Mozeson is right. And more and more researchers are beginning to think that the monogenesis theory of world languages having one main root language at their origins is correct, (as the Bible indicates in Genesis 11:1). The book is a must for anybody with a taste for the truth. This book is an eye opener par excellance.

There is an introduction and preface to the dictionary, but most readers will need more essays about this mind-blowing topic before trying to take on the 22,000 words the book traces back to their ultimate source in "Edenic" (Biblical Hebrew +.) I strongly suggest first visiting the Edenic website. Once you have a good grasp of the thesis, and words grouped into fun topics, like animal names, you'll then be able to appreciate the reference book. A future edition has to do what these essays, and the audio and video lectures do. Break the examples down into words that had root letters shift or change place, etc. In the book, you have to keep all the babble effects from Babel in your mind at the same time. The dictionary attempts to make this clear, but most readers will want the easier overviews first.

This is a really fascinating book. I have often wondered why the etymology sections in dictionaries stop at the ancient Greek or Latin and only very occasionally go back to more ancient languages like Arabic or Sanskrit. Mozeson has collected English words which he claims have clear connections to the Hebrew. For example the (Hebrew) word "marah" is found in the Bible to mean mirror, "derekh" means trek or track, "deo" means die and so on. Some of the connections might seem teneous but most are real eye openers. Oh, and in case you are worried Mozeson is not a fundementalist Bible basher although it must be said that according to Jewish tradition Genesis 11:1 refers to the Hebrew Language (look it up) which would make it the orignal language. Mozeson has written other books on slang language and on teenagers. If you are not at least a little familiar with Hebrew this book will be of less interest to you.

Wors In Context will give you an angle by which you may evaluate your deeply held cultural concepts, especially those that you may not consciously consider as cultural (and therefore, fluid) concepts.

For example, the author considers the concept of mercy killing of animals. The average American mind would consider it a cruelty not to "alleviate misery" and through this lens, any alternate behavior becomes a violation of Natural Law. The Japanese concept as put forth in this book considers "mercy killing" a human-centered concept that, as such, is the antithesis of holding the animal's corporeality in high regard. Nature should decide the fate of an animal, instead.

So, we have here two differing ideas of right-to-life concepts that people hold with the highest integrity. what to do??

Another example extends the differing concepts on animals by examining our relationships with pets. Whereas the American must have complete obedience of the animal to his every whim, the Japanese concept of a pet recognizes this treatment as a larger distortion of nature and gives more leeway for a dog to be a dog.

(New York city in this light is an eye-opening case indeed as the New Yorker's near pet-worship is held in its highest dysfunctional relief when a man kneels to pick up after his dog, while the dog stares on and seemingly recongnizes and enjoys this debasing servitude. "Kind master, you missed a bit.")

Despite that last poke, don't take the book as a polemic. It's not. It's just a solid exposition with ample reflection that, at a minimum, gets you far away from any of the common and misguided blanket statements on Japanese culture. However, in a wider view, the book gives many opportunities for you to evaluate your own culture.

It is difficult to understand your own culture by holding it up to its own standards.

Use this book to take a look inside yourself and learn something about Japan along the way.

This is a wonderful book. Suzuki teaches us how to see our own language and culture "from the outside" (from the perspective of a non-Indo-European mentality); because of this I have assigned Suzuki's book as a required text in several college courses on language and culture. I particularly recommend the sections on "translatability" (especially chapters 1 and 2) and the chapter on "Words for Self and Others" (chapter 6). The latter reports a splendid bit of linguistic research and analysis that any reader can understand and appreciate: in it Suzuki undertakes to explain how and why "I" and "You" relate to one another differently in Japanese- and English-speaking cultures.

Although I am very much an casual student of Japanese, I was attracted by the contents of this publication as I flicked through it at the bookshop. It is a translation of an old (1973) work by Takao Suzuki, a Japanese linguistics academic. Surprisingly the book is written in a quite light style, with some humor even if a little dated. On the surface I found the book quite exciting because it helps explain how words which appear to have similar meanings from a 'dictionary' viewpoint, can have very different social meanings and cultural usage. Examples are the verbs "cut" and "wear", which appear relatively simple to English speakers, yet have a range of different verbs and very different contexts in their Japanese usage. The section on the cultural context of the words "lips", "nose" and "chin", for example, start to bring a feeling for the complexity of meaning, and perhaps the inadequacy of many dictionary definitions which up to now I had taken at face value.

Moving through to the last chapter "Words for Self and Others" I found myself totally captivated by Suzuki's clear exposition of the misclassification of these parts of Japanese speech according to a misunderstanding of their relationship to English personal pronouns. It sounds heavy, but it is not, on the contrary it is a clear insight into the social context of words and language. I will never see those words in the same light again, and my Japanese will be certainly better for it.

At a much more profound level Suzuki expounds his core belief that words create things, in contrast to our "natural" acceptance of the idea that objects exist independently of language. If this is too deep then fortunately it does not impose on the value of the book at the more pedestrian level at which I thoroughly enjoyed it.

If you are a curious student of Japanese, then you will enjoy this book. I intend to read it again, and expect to enjoy it at least as much as the first time.

a very useful book to have if you are studying japan and want to know what peoples names mean or how to write your name in japanese, especially if your an american manga artist like me.

I'm trying to teach myself Japanese, got this book as a present, and love it. It exposes the reader to written Japanese while doing so in a non-threatening way.

I keep it aside for days when I need to practice Japanese but I can't stand to look at another kanji textbook... I'll pick it up, flip through, and have fun laughing at some of the (purposefully) sillier name-translations while still seeing Japanese characters. My name, Christina, came out to 'serene Christian beauty' for the 'serious'-meaning name, but there are lots of other less elegant ones. ;)

Overall, it's a great supplement that can make Japanese seem more fun and personal while still exposing the reader to the actual written language.

This book really shows you how to write your name in kanji.This really helped me and my friend so we could write our names inanother language besides English! END

Let's play vocabulary catch-up: The word "ketchup" is as American as burgers and fries, right? Wrong! The word is actually derived from the Chinese word "ke-jap," which means "fish sauce." In this fascinating volume, renowned linguist Eugene Ehrlich takes us on an eye-opening (and sometimes jaw-dropping) tour of how Americans have taken words from other languages and used them as our own. Kitsch? It's German, and means "trash." Ukulele? It's Hawaiian, and means (literally) "leaping flea." High muck-a-muck? It's Chinook and means "plenty to eat." The book is plenty of fun.

I loved this book!!!! I had this problem. I had ketchup on my muumuu and I didn't know what to do about it. So, I looked up "you've got ketchup on your muumuu.com" on the internet and I found this wonderful, lifesaving book!!! It was exactly what I needed. I discovered how to classify the ketchup by tomato content and acidity. Armed with this information, I was then equipped to deal with my ketchup/muumuu situation. I then took the book and rubbed it vigourously back and forth against my muumuu. This served to create a significant source of friction which heated my muumuu up to a point where the ketchup began to slide off. My muumuu was painful for weeks but at least the ketchup was removed. Oh my, thank you, thank you, Eugene Erlich, Eugene Enrlich!!! You've saved my life!!!!

I enjoyed this book for many reasons. Number one, the title alone is enough to make you want to buy it. How can you resist? I write every day (newspaper) and it helps to have a book like this. I am always looking for creative ways to express myself and this is what this does for you. I find it even more helpful that he supplies a guide for pronunciation so I don't have to sound like an idiot if I want to use one of these words in a conversation.

This is a great book to have handy. As a complement to this guide and a realistic approach to the genealogy issue I recommend the "Ancestry DNA Toolbox" available at .... Many studies with the human Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA have made it possible to trace back our ancestry. In many cases names and DNA markers can be coupled to study our genealogy. It is not an easy task but worth investigating.

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You won't learn how to speak German for this book, but that's not the point. Rather, this book is mainly for those who already have a fair amount of German knowledge, but who want to have a quick, handy, but extensive guide to the various words they will need in actually using the language.

In that respect if succeeds admirably. Lists are arranged thematically for easy look-up. In short, essential.

I went to Germany and this book helped so much when it came to ordering meals and such.