Dictionary Reviews

If you don't have the latest Newton's, you're not doing telecom.

As a telecommunications student, I was leery of all the abbreviations and unfamiliar terms. This book was very helpful in explaining new words and phrases, especially since the telecommunications industry is full of strange acronyms. Very worthwhile!

If Amazon had a 20 star rating system, that is what this book would get. I keep mine located between my PC and my phone in the office...which is where I use it the most. And I use this book, literally, every day. I have only found one item I have looked for that I could not find between the two covers (a FHSS encoding method at 1Mbps). I emailed the author and it is due in the next revision. Most of all, don't let the title decieve you! This is NOT a straight telecom book. Need info on cellular, paging, wireless LANs, data networking? It is ALL there. This is the most used book I own and I own hundreds. The best investment in a book you will ever make!

I heard this guy on a local radio station in Atlanta (96Rock) and so I ordered a copy. It was so hysterical I almost messed myself.

This book is hilarious. I heard Jefarrius promote it on 96Rock, a radio station in Atlanta, and ducked out of work to buy a copy. It was totally worth it!

I have often noticed the names of some of the Superstar athletes in all the sports and wondered about the origin, what the parents were thinking when they gave the child that particular name, and if the athlete changed his own name to one of those mentioned in this great book, why did he do so? Now I have the reason.....the parents, any parents, want the best for their child, and the athlete sees it as a no-brainer issue: To succeed on the playing field, you need a Superstar Name! I highly reccommend this book not only to expectant parents, but for anyone sitting around the television watching sports! I haven't laughed so hard in a long time. The book is well written and well documented by the writer!

Fun, easy and very efficient. Excellent audio, slow enough for a beginner, excellent dialogues with the kind of words and structures you need in a foreign country. The language is explained in a way that makes it easy to understand. There are absolutely lots of exercises to practice what you are learning. This is a course I strongly recommend.

There are several things I really like about this course: the method (you build up your knowledge of the language step by step); the authentic dialogues; the grammar notes and verb conjugation tables; the cultural points; and the letter writing. The course is lively, fun, and very efficient. The audio is good, at the right speed for the learner. The book also has lots of exercises with a key, another very good feature. I bought this course after having bought Portuguese Living Language (ISBN 1400020239) and I am using both. I think they make good partners.

There are several reasons why I really like about this course: the method (you build up your knowledge of the language step by step); the authentic dialogues; the grammar notes and verb conjugation tables; the cultural points; and the letter writing. The course is lively, fun, and very efficient. The audio is good, at the right speed for the learner. The book also has lots of exercises with a key, another very good feature. I bought this course after having bought Portuguese Living Language (ISBN 1400020239) and I am using both. I think they make good partners.

My 8 year old reads these non-stop. She loves the fact that she can read endlessly about the same characters with different adventures.

Everything you ever wanted to know about the Baby-Sitters Club is in this book. It is very detailed.For example:One of the facts is that Kristy's little sister's worst enemy in her class, Bobby Gianalli, his father's occupation is working for an insurance company.

The COMPLETE guide to the Baby-Sitters Club. It's an excellent book, it tells you all the baby-sitters clients, about their family, friends out of the club. There's a lot more to it. But I won't llist all of them, if you want to know, than read the book and find out! GET IT OR GET OUT!!!!!!

Este libro es excelente para los dos inglés e español estudiantes.¡Compras ahora!

This second edition has over 3,000 new entries and translations which reflect recent changes in business, technology, medicine and other areas. This mammoth dictionary is a very user friendly resource which not only gives the translation, but also the context, and in many cases, the appropriate idiomatic expression.

I had the first edition of this dictionary back when I took high school Spanish in the 1970's. I loved it then, and when I recently made the decision to take up this beautiful language again, I picked this dictionary from among several choices.

This is an essential reference addition for anyone learning Spanish, whether on your own, or as part of a class.

This is the best dictionary of all the dictionaries that I have purchased over the years. I use my current one daily and am buying one for one of the mothers of my bilingual class so that she can learn English along with her child. Everyone who has seen this dictionary has wanted one. I will always check here first. Thanks

I've used many language help books but this one is my favorite. I felt like I could indeed self teach Italian. And when I went to Italy my cousins there did understand me (for the most part). It's a great book for slowly building to a conversational understanding of the language.

My husband and I review this book from cover to cover each year before we go back to Italy. We have been doing this for 20 years. I am about to order another paperback as I use it so much. This is a classic book. So easy to learn with pictures and words. For someone who knows no Italian, it is the perfect book to start with.

The author claims that the user will be "pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to learn Italian with the method used in this book." I must say that truer words were never written. This little book will somehow have you "thinking" basic Italian very quickly.

I guess that the pictures help reinforce the learning process, but that's not what makes this book great. It's the grouping of the ideas on the page that makes it so comprehensible. Not only do the "lessons" logically progress, each one also stands on its own as a useful learning experience. This confirms the author's claim that each page is a lesson unto itself.

The book has a pronunciation guide, a limited but useful index, and a small Italian to English dictionary. There are also a number of "Everyday Expressions," that are just what the doctor ordered.

This is a "must have" book. Yes, you may quickly outgrow it, but you will find yourself referring to it often as you continue your studies.

Mr. Schur has a gift for glibly describing the essence and etymology of obscure words. He's my favorite philologist!

This book is his first of the four "1000 Words Series." Basically, each book is a mini-dictionary targeting the weirdest and odd words. He provides the word, and pronunciation, then a brief entry explaining the etymology and use of each word. His pen shines and his tongue is blarney. I am impressed that any human being could make a dictionary entry so lively!

A freebie:

Exacerbate: (ig zas' er bate) vb. To exacerbate a situation is to worsen it, to aggravate it, in the sense of increasing its bitterness. A clumsy nurse's ministrations serve only to exacerbate the pain of the patient. Harsh words can only exacerbate bitter feelings. Inept handling exacerbates any situation. The -acerb- part of the word is found also in acerbic. We get exacerbate from Latin exacerbates, a form of exacebare (to exacerbate, embitter).

You can click on the "Look Inside" function to see other samples. I wish my Webster's had this spunk and vigor.

This book is for the English major or grad student, copy editors, or the public speaker. This book also works for your snob-ling friends, your eccentric associates who are into Crispin Glover, or for someone that is hard to shop for. Cruxverbalists will certainly underline and dog-ear this book.

The only drawback to this book is that it relies heavily on Greco-Latin words. This violates "Strunk and White's" Reminder #14: Avoid Fancy words. They assert: "Avoid the elaborate, the pretentious, the coy, and the cute. Do not be tempted by a twenty-dollar word when there is a ten-center handy, ready and able. Anglo-Saxon is a livelier tongue than Latin, so use Anglo-Saxon words." Therefore, this book is great for personal edification, and the soul who loves to connect root words with their branch meanings.

Just like the cover says, "For anyone and everyone who has something the say!"

Listed in alphabetical order, it's great to use as resource when reading a work of classical literature, writing a paper, or of course to enrich your vacab. From abashed(disconcerted) to zealot(fanatic), Schur provides definitions, synonms, roots, and plenty of examples so that even an obtuse(slow-witted, thick--headed) philistine(one who not only lacks culture and is smugly indifferent to it, but tends to attack it) can learn copious amounts of new words, establish a penchant for being articulate, and perhaps, if he's lucky, even acquire a prodigious amount of savoir-faire like moi.

I originally learned English is a non-native environment, and always struggled with the low correlation between spelling and the "non-intutive" pronunciations, and other exceptions in English. Many of these words were difficult to pronounce [correctly, for me] and, therefore, my functional vocabulary was much less than its passive counterpart. Sometimes I didn't use these words for the fear of missing - either the pronunciation, or the context, nuances etc. I have used several vocabulary books in the past, but this is the only one which had 90%+ words that are very "usable" and will truly enrich my speech. I have a much better "feel" for these 1000, and many of them will soon be part of my written and spoken language. The phonetic transcription presented with the words was also of great value (the key to my "active" vocabulary). The best $[money] I have ever spent on a word book.

Speech, language, and communication is what makes us effective (and human too!), and I am glad to have read this.

This was a very solid method of learning that focuses heavily on speaking and conversation. Learning characters at the same time as the speaking language can be very intimidating and most professors would agree that there should be a substantial amount of lag between the spoken and written chinese. (see Chinese Primer Ta-Tuan Ch'En - the books I use for my Georgetown University Chinese classes) The Pimsleur method does not offer character knowledge, but it does allow a student to grasp the tones and sounds which are so vital to the language. I would suggest to anyone who is listening to the audio cds to begin with the cds and then, only when comfortable with pronounciation and tones, to go pick up some character and vocabulary texts. This was definitely money well spent because it really was a great way to begin my intensive Mandarin Chinese course.

I must admit that having lived in the PRC for six months, without benefit of speaking Mandarin ("a stranger in a strange land"), I am motivated to learn Mandarin. While I am not particulary strong in languages, Pimsleur has met all my expectations. I am using the CD's as one part of my efforts to learn Mandarin. The good Dr Pimsleur states that his intention is to teach Mandarin solely through audio means. It works.
However, I am augmenting the CD's by writing the lessons out in Pinying and by being coached by a native Mandarin speaker. To date, I have covered the first set, part of the second set and have ordered the third set of CD's. I am not a speed daemon, presently I am doing roughly two lessons per week. I listen to each lesson twice. The third time I use Pinyin to write down all new words and phrases. The the forth time, I again just listen to the CD's. The fifth time through, I transcribe the entire lesson in Pinyin in MSWord (complete with tone marks...these documents make great review notes). The sixth time through, it's just the CD's again. With roughly six hours spent listening and transcribing the CD lesson, I'm ready for a two hour session with a live Mandarin speaker. The coaching session discusses any unusual or regional expressions that might have been used on the CD's, augments vocabulary with related words and discusses differences in Chinese and North American culture as related to the lesson contents.
Results so far are encouraging, the CD's prepare me by getting most of the "heavy lifting" of pronounciation and phrasing out of the way. I am not wasting the coach's time with extensive pronunciation practice.
The Pimsleur Mandarin CD's, along with a Pinyin dictionary (Oxford Starter Chinese Dictionary) and a native Mandarin speaker have worked well for me! Highly recommended.

Pimsleur's Chinese is as of yet by far the best money I have spent on language learning materials. The method of repetition, questioning, and recall combined with a broad variety of phrase combinations and sentence structures (these are really the key to "unlock" your language knowledge) provide a solid foundation of spoken chinese. In my opinion, the most priceless facet of the Pimsleur method is the impeccable pronunciation that develops from learning by listening alone- there is no pinyin here to pollute one's chinese phonetics with crude approximations of chinese sounds. In this manner one picks up difficult chinese initals (j, zh, c, q, etc.) as well as the tones much more naturally. The serious flaw of the Pimsleur method as applied to chinese, though, is the issue of reading and writing- the ideographic language cannot be taught through CD's alone. If you are at all serious about learning the language, a tutor, class, or at the very least a character workbook of some sort is a must-have. By learning the written language, you will also catch on to some of the grammatical and idiomatic subtleties that that course fails to address (although to Pimsleur's credit they do a great job of fitting a solid base of useful, conversational chinese into only 15 hours of instruction).

My personal experience with the course was a lot of fun- I had enrolled in a course at school and wanted to get a bit ahead of the class, so I bought the course. I started off, with my small previous knowledge base, and took off at a break-neck pace, doing two or three lessons a day- while driving in the car (this is a HUGE plus to the Pimsleur system; it is totally hands-off), waiting for class to start, or just sitting at home in the evening. I know this is not the pace suggested by the course materials, but I found that the more aggressively I tackled the lessons, the more I wanted to learn, and that the faster pace was not harming my retention in the least. On the rare occasion that I did struggle, it was simple to just repeat the lesson until I felt comfortable with it. After just two or three lessons, I found myself mumbling chinese to myself to practice the tones and pronunciations and at one point even attracted a compliment from a chinese passerby who wanted to know who my tutor was! After about eight or ten lessons
(well under a week for me), I could order, settle checks, and make a bit of small-talk in a chinese restaurant, much to the amazement of the waitress!

Having a comfortable grasp of the Pimsleur material helped me immensely in class, too- I found it much easier to associate the written characters with the words I was already familiar with from Pimsleur than to try to learn both the characters and the words all at the same time. The speaking and conversation practice you get from the Pimsleur courses is invaluable and will make you sound like a pro compared to those attempting to learn from a book or in a large class setting.

Overall, this course is a great investment if you are planning a trip to China (the first lessons are useful skills in introductions, restaurants, and short conversation) or are just interested in learning the language (the lessons topics and vocabulary grow more diverse as you progress through the course). I personally cannot wait for levels II and III.

I was glad to find this book and Inglés Para Latinos to use as the vocabulary for our class of partners who help each other learn English and Spanish. (and their second levels for the more advanced speakers.) I've developed lesson plans that coordinate the 2 books and give practice (because the books are nearly all vocabulary.) The students like the encouraging tapes and the easy explanations in their own language of the meanings. And they want copies for their friends.

The book is very funny yet informative, making it an easy read for the beginner. The video version (also published by Barron's) runs along similar lines, but with the added benefit of being able to see Bill Harvey in action.

I brought this book to help me brush up on my Spanish. I spoke a little before I brought the book. I am a Cuban / Dominican that was born in the States and never really learned Spanish. This text helpped me like no other. What is great about this text is that it also give you words specific for different countries. The author gave words that are used in Cuba and Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic. I highly Recommend this book to anyone first pass at learning Spanish.

The beginner's kana workbook is clear and neat and it gives the right order for the pen strokes to be done. It also has an appealing global approach to kana and includes a final section of useful ready-to-use sentences that help get started with Japanese reading.
Nevertheless it lacks of more explanations about handwritten Japanese and about the commonest variations (e.g. for the "sa" sound). The hirigana way of writing of some basic greetings words that people mostly read in the romanji form of writing are also missed.

The first step to learning Japanese is to learn kana, both hiragana and katakana. It is just like learning the Alphabet. The more difficult Kanji comes only after mastering the two basic writing systems. All quality Japanese books will use a kana base, rather than a romaji (English writing of Japanese) base.

Kana learning is incredibly simple, and is basically learning the strokes, then getting a good workbook for practice. I found the "Beginner's Kana Workbook" to be an excellent tool in kana acquisition, with appropriate exercises for both writing forms. Also, hiragana and katakana are combined in one book, as they should be, for a good price.

Make no mistake, this book has one purpose and one purpose only: to show you how to write the japanese characters within hiragana and katakana. It has ample space to practise, and explains in what order the strokes should be for proper writing.
I found it refreshing to use to remember what each character actually means and would recommend it as a good supplement aid to any japanese language course. (personal or class)