Customer Reviews

Catalan-English/English-Catalan Dictionary (Hippocrene Concise Dictionary)

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I purchased this book for an upcoming trip to Catalunya, and for my own desire to learn Catalan. While the dictionary has served its purpose adequately (i.e. defined vague road signs and words in the hotel), it lacks in two areas.

First, there are no pronounciation guides. This wouldn't be a problem, but the only "Teach Yourself" book on Catalan also lacks in the area of pronounciation.

Second, the dictionary is too abridged. Now, of course adding to it increases the size, which makes use for travel unwieldy. However, if it is going to be marketed to the traveller, then it should contain more travel type words than it does.

In short, I would recommend the dictionary to the traveller, but only because its the only Catalan Engligh Dictionary I could find in such a small size. However, the serious student is going to need something more.

I found this dictionary almost worthless. It carefully includes rarities like "xebec" and "yawl," but hours of trying to read Catalan with it proved that it lacks many basic words on both the Catalan and English sides. It should have been superseded by the excellent "mini" dictionary published by Enciclopèdia Catalana, which I discovered later.

Usually when traveling to a foreign locale, a traveler tends not to like to carry so much on hand when exploring the sights sounds, and culture of an area. While many try to avoid looking like tourists by pulling out maps or travel books out of their bags or pockets, sometimes it is necessary to have a compact-sized dictionary on hand when their is a communication problem.

The "Catalan-English/Catalan Dictionary" by M.S. Sabater and J.A. Freixnet is the perfect solution when traveling throughout Spain's autonomous Catalonia region. Fiercely independent from Madrid, Catalans have taken great pride in promoting use of their language ever since the end of the Franco regime that prohibited the use of Catalan in public. Taught privately in homes, Catalan was able to survive and now is seeing a resurgence in popularity and commercial use as more and more tourists arrive in eastern Spain. The language, spoken mainly in eastern Spain, southeastern France, Andorra (its' official language) and in Italy (on the island of Sardinia), this dictionary is helpful for those who already have a knowledge of how to pronounce words in Catalan. I bought two copies of the book, and sent one to a friend of mine in Terrassa, and he has told me it has been one of the greatest gifts anyone has given him, since most Catalan dictionaries sold in Spain are large and bulky. Hippocrene Press, a publisher of many foreign-language books did a great job in producing a small dictionary for Catalan speakers, however the lack of a pronunciation guide is the only negative thing about this book. As a fluent Spanish speaker I try to avoid pronouncing words in Spanish because I want to respectful to the Catalan culture, but it can be difficult not to.

Regardless of this omission, this is a great book to have if you're walking through the streets of Barcelona, sunning yourself on Ibiza, shopping Andorra's duty-free markets, or just to understand general street signs and billboards throughout Catalonia. Instead of looking like a tourist, if you were to pull this book out in Barcelona, you are likely to win the admiration and respect of Catalonia's proud inhabitants.

Having just returned from Barcelona, we found that this little book was not useful at all. The book is divided in half, first a Catalan to English section and then English to Catalan section, which lists words alphabetically and includes the part of speech and the counter-word, but little else. There is no pronunciation key, which is really important for the Catalan language. Neither were there any phrases or sections of particular use to the traveller. In Barcelona, we found that most people spoke a little English or were able to use Spanish, so we didn't use this dictionary at all. We used smaller books that contained travel phrases and gave some hint to pronunciation instead.

This dictionary is more of a large glossary than a dictionary in the proper sense. It is good for having a long list of vocabulary words in gallego, but it gives nothing beyond that. Most entries have only one word as the translation and there is little to nothing in the way of multiple meanings, grammatical/ colloquial uses or verb conjugations.