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conulyI find myself in the position of needing a new one. The only one printed after 1990 is Ana's children's dictionary, and of course that's not acceptable. For adult purposes, I want something good and comprehensive. Any recommendations? We used to have the two volume complete OED with magnifying glass, but that's gone now, I don't know where. At any rate, it too would now be out of date. And we lost the glass long before we lost the dictionary.
On the subject of the children's dictionary, it's good enough for what it is, but when I browse through it I notice it's as good as it could be, mostly because of how they represent pronunciations.
See, they decided to eschew any "complicated" symbols to "decode". Fair enough, it is a children's dictionary, we want them to just be able to open it and go in.
However, their method has several flaws. It is not terribly consistent, some of the representations they made for certain sounds are not at all intuitive, and they apparently don't believe in the schwi. Many dictionaries don't, but in many of them they use the symbol and in this one they right "uh", which is very frustrating when in your dialect the correct sound is, as it often is, closer to "ih".
As far as consistency goes, boat is pronounced as bote, fairly intuitive... but all compounds with boat, like boathouse, are written boht. Why? This is neither intuitive nor consistent. In the word trait the pronunciation is given as trate, but in vain it's given as vayn. It's bad enough that normal written English has so many ways to spell the same sound, but should the pronunciation guide in the dictionary have the same problem? There is a pronunciation guide at the beginning, but children shouldn't have to refer to it to read the pronunciations, and it should be consistent. At the very least, it should be consistent when sounds are at the same place. I can understand having one way to write a sound at the end of the word and another at the beginning, but that gives them too much credit.
Then there's syllable divisions, which are often one way on the entry proper, and an entirely different way in the pronunciation guide. For example, we have nerv ous, pronunciation guide says nur vuss. Why move the v? Probably because the way children are taught to divide syllables doesn't really correspond to how we actually divide them when we speak, which is a problem, but this just confuses the issue.
So yes. I need at least one new dictionary for me. Any ideas?
On the subject of the children's dictionary, it's good enough for what it is, but when I browse through it I notice it's as good as it could be, mostly because of how they represent pronunciations.
See, they decided to eschew any "complicated" symbols to "decode". Fair enough, it is a children's dictionary, we want them to just be able to open it and go in.
However, their method has several flaws. It is not terribly consistent, some of the representations they made for certain sounds are not at all intuitive, and they apparently don't believe in the schwi. Many dictionaries don't, but in many of them they use the symbol and in this one they right "uh", which is very frustrating when in your dialect the correct sound is, as it often is, closer to "ih".
As far as consistency goes, boat is pronounced as bote, fairly intuitive... but all compounds with boat, like boathouse, are written boht. Why? This is neither intuitive nor consistent. In the word trait the pronunciation is given as trate, but in vain it's given as vayn. It's bad enough that normal written English has so many ways to spell the same sound, but should the pronunciation guide in the dictionary have the same problem? There is a pronunciation guide at the beginning, but children shouldn't have to refer to it to read the pronunciations, and it should be consistent. At the very least, it should be consistent when sounds are at the same place. I can understand having one way to write a sound at the end of the word and another at the beginning, but that gives them too much credit.
Then there's syllable divisions, which are often one way on the entry proper, and an entirely different way in the pronunciation guide. For example, we have nerv ous, pronunciation guide says nur vuss. Why move the v? Probably because the way children are taught to divide syllables doesn't really correspond to how we actually divide them when we speak, which is a problem, but this just confuses the issue.
So yes. I need at least one new dictionary for me. Any ideas?
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no subject
Date: 2012-12-02 01:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-02 10:11 pm (UTC)Webster's 3rd New International, the official dictionary of the National Spelling Bee, represents the schwi as a schwa with a dot over it. (Merriam-Webster has always eschewed the IPA in favor of their own scheme.) The controversy related to whether the pronouncer should have given two pronunciations (one closer to 'ih' and one closer to 'uh'), or whether he should have just given one pronunciation, since it's a single symbol that slightly varies between dialects.
I can't remember what they finally decided, though...
no subject
Date: 2012-12-03 01:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-03 02:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-03 03:04 pm (UTC)http://www.nypl.org/collections/articles-databases?subject=&location=&audience=&language=&keyword=oxford%20english&limit=
Which is a pretty sweet deal, considering that a personal year-long subscription is almost $300.
I used to have access to this when I lived in Toronto. Now I live in the boonies, and our local library system only has a Britannica subscription. Ah well.
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Date: 2012-12-03 04:28 pm (UTC)But I still want my own. I urgently missed that OED during the blackout after the hurricane.
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Date: 2012-12-03 07:02 pm (UTC)OED has always been my favourite... of course, the only dictionary we have in the house (that isn't a Scrabble dictionary, anyway) is a 1945 copy of Webster's (fun for the "new words" section, but not terribly useful most of the time). And, come to think of it, I have no idea where that is. Still packed in a box somewhere.
What's your budget for dictionaries like? You can get a paperback OED (not concise version, but not multi-volume either) for about $11 or $12 online.
If I still lived in Toronto, I'd go to the U of T bookstore and check out their used section for you! Alas, where I live now... not really a hot-spot for used text/reference books. :)