Customer Reviews

The Bantam New College Spanish & English Dictionary

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This dictionary has served me well for the past 8 years and has even been to other Spanish-speaking countries with me. Although not as complete as bulkier dictionaries, thereby not helping me with more complicated translation projects, it is great for those who have some basic knowledge of Spanish and functions complete enough as a slightly-bigger-than-your-pocket travel companion. Another college peer of mine has worn out her copy as much as I have, and we have not had any problems going through our intermediate levels of Spanish with it.

This bilingual dictionary's two greatest virtues are its compact yet readable format and its affordable price. And, as a bonus, there are brief summaries of irregular verb forms, which occur with frequency that keeps a novice like me guessing. These reminders are packaged with the two-way translations for convenience, never meant as a substitute for an exhaustive reference.

This meets my limited needs, as someone who comes across the occasional unfamiliar word in newspaper-level reading. Most high school language students will also find that it has all the vocabulary they need. This isn't a scholar's reference, though. Translated definitions tend towards the terse, so they won't cover all usages of a term. And, to keep cost down, it's printed on pulp stock, so it won't last forever even if handled gently. It offers plenty if you don't need much, and that's good enough for me right now.

//wiredweird

This book is excellent. I refer to it often in order to clarify
fine nuances in the Spanish language. The work has a beginning
section which focuses on pronunciation of the Spanish
alphabet. Afterward, the Spanish word is listed and translated
into English for A-Z. At the midway point, the English word
is listed and translated into Spanish. In addition, there is
an extensive section on verbal tenses. The origin of words
is fully described . For instance, there are distinctions
for Spanish/American, Cuban and Puerto Rican vocabulary.

This dictionary is an excellent choice for the price. Of course you can get better ones, but certainly you will need lot of additional money and an additional backpack exclusively for carrying it around! This Williams dictionary is by far better than Oxford's Compact English/Spanish dictionary and other "pocket" dictionaries one comes up with. Overall, a good dictionary.

As a Spanish student of 5 years, the Bantam New College Dictionary is the best dictionary I have seen yet. It never fails to have the word or phrases that I am looking for. It is necessary for truly understanding the Spanish language.

This is the best paperback dictionary around: it's not an abridgement of a larger dictionary, but the full version of a hardback dictionary. It's also available in a somewhat compact hardback edition, which is handy. A previous reviewer is wrong: all nouns show the gender, both in the Spanish-English and English-Spanish parts of the dictionary. There are lots of phrases, English and Spanish, that are translated into idiomatic, natural language. If you can love a dictionary, this is the one.

This dictionary could serve as a companion to leisure reading, but professional translators, academics, or businesspeople must not risk their livelyhood on its often erroneous and incomplete translations. I know of one university Spanish department that officially does not recognize the dictionary for this reason.

ANNOYING TIME WASTER---> This book only tells you the gender of the Spanish words in the Spanish-to-English half. When you need to know how to say a word in Spanish, you look it up in the English-to-Spanish side, and then, to be sure the word does not have an irregular gender, you have to look up the Spanish word on the Spanish-to-English side because that's the only side that lists the gender. This means you spend twice the time looking up the word in this dictionary than you would in another.

It is kind of nice because it is compact and because it does contain some hard-to-find uncommon words, but I wish I would not have bought it.

This dictionary was on my sons school list as a must have. It was bought used, although it looked brand new. Shipped in a sealed plastic bag, it was received in great condition.

Even though the description was correct on this dictionary, print is too small for my aging eyes. In fairness, it was a very old version and the pages were beginning to turn. What can one expect for $1.00! Newer version may be better.

Simple and Complete. If you can't find the word you are looking for, then it don't exist.