Customer Reviews

Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española : 10 000 artículos, 1 300 familias de palabras (Historia) (Spanish Edition)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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This book was a very pleasant surprise: an excellent, ample etymological dictionary of Spanish at an affordable price and not too heavy!
The dictionary provides a very informative and erudite history of Spanish words without being unclear or unreadable. I particularly liked the treatment of prefixes and suffixes as well as the etymology of non-Spanish place names such as "Londres" or "Zurich". This dictionary should be of great use to anyone who is interested in the comparative development of Romance languages, linguistics or in etymology in general.

It is as if the word "breve"/"brief" has to be taken literally. The text is large and not much fits on the pages, so one feels that one has bought a truly brief dictionary. However, I have had a use for it which I can refer to; I needed the meaning of, and to learn, the word "ahondar". "Ahondar" means to probe the depth of something, probably in both a figurative and a literal sense. Now how to learn, i.e. remember this, is to go to this dictionary; breve diccionario etimológico; and what you find is that "ahondar" is related to the word "fondo", which relates to the word foundation, i.e. the bottom or the depth of it. Now that becomes easy to remember, i.e. learn, because there are other common examples of an f/h exchange in Spanish, for example: "Fernández" is often "Hernández", or Fernando/Hernando. This makes it easy to remember by the "foundation"-word, and by the common letter exchange; in a way a hidden f in "ahondar"; as in explanatory non spanish "afondar". This method, and therefore book, allows you to learn many words by logic rather than by rote. What's more, the idea of this h/f exchange has now become one that I will look for in more mystery words that have an h where it could be an f. So the book has taught me two things from that word only; the meaning of the word, and more skill in the f/h problem. And no matter how chunky, there are thousands of words in the book, so no doubt I will have many similarly happy experiences with it. Breve tal vez, pero ¡bueno!

Esencial para mi trabajo en el campo de la comunicación. Aunque se que existen muchos más completos. Es un buen precio por un libro necesario.

A good dictionary with clear defitions plus the derivation of the word. I find having the etymology of a word in any language very useful in understanding its meaning. This dictionary provides this. It does not provide any sense of the history of the word and the changes in useage through time, which is a pity, but understandable in a book of this length. Compared to the Concise Oxford Dictionary in English, for example it is very thin in its exploration of the meanings of the word, but often much deeper on the etymology.

Una buena obra que nos ayudara a conocer y comprender mejor el origen y significado de las palabras,para así poder aplicarlas correctamente en su debido significado y contexto

This is a book everybody who is interested in the Spanish language must have.