Customer Reviews

Albanian-English/English-Albanian Dictionary and Phrasebook (Dictionary & Phrasebooks Backlist)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I bought this dictionary to use with Kosovar refugees I am currently teaching english. I thought it would be fun to suprise them by learning a little of their own language as well because they are working so hard. This book has many, many, fabulous phrases in the last section that apply to almost every situation. While the dictionary is small and has only a limited vocabulary, most commonly used words are available. My only problem with this book is that unlike some others, there is no real pronunciation guide so you are left guessing if you are truly pronouncing things correctly. If you are looking for correct pronunciation, I suggest getting tapes or asking a native.

If you are used to the very well designed Lonely Planet or Berlitz dictionary/phrasebooks then you won't be too thrilled with Hysa's offering. However, it is the only phrasebook available for Albanian<->English at this time.

Number of entries in the dictionary == paltry. More often than not, I ended up looking in Stefanllari's dictionary to find the word I wanted.

I still recommend you purchase this is for the topical phrasebook and grammar sections. My Albanian wife says the vocabulary choice in this book has a bias toward Kosovar rather than 'typical modern Albanian'. But it is still adequate...and what else are you going to buy instead of it anyway?

Great for beginners in Albanian. It is pocket sized so you can carry it with you. Best results come from memorizing a few words every day. The bidirectional dictionary gives you enough words for basic communication. Avoids the complexities of Albanian grammar. A sampling of phrases gives you enough insight into making sentences. Local Kosovar refugees say I will be understood even though my pronunciation and sentence structure is not perfect.

I ordered this book for the Albanian and Macedonian students I teach in my ESL class. The book is quite solid and compact, as bilingual dictionaries go, convenient for carrying. But we have not found it to be of much use. There simply are not enough words in it. The vocabulary is very limited. More than half the time we can't find the word we're looking for. We get much better results with the monolingual Oxford Picture Dictionary for English learners.

I carry this dictionary around with me to use as I navigate daily life in Albania, where I am only beginning to learn the language. It's small, making it easy to carry with me, but it is missing a lot of words. There's another, slightly larger dictionary by Stefanllari that is much more comprehensive, and I find that one to be a bit more useful.