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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 At any rate, it too would now be out of date.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?
no subject
Date: 2012-12-02 01:07 am (UTC)