Customer Reviews

A Comprehensive Persian English Dictionary

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As the reviewer from Jerusalem says, an excellent dictionary which ought to be on the shelf of any Persianist. But... the book is a hundred years old and Modern Persian is significantly different, so don't buy it expecting to use it for the newspaper.

Steingass's dictionary is a useful tool for all those studying the Persian language, and in particular to those more interested in poetry and classical Persian. This comprehensive dictionary includes not only words and phrases, but also pronunciation aids (especially important for reading poetry). There are words in the dictionary which are not usually used in modern Persian, but on the whole it is an important and significant tool for Persian researchers and students.

Francis Joseph Steingass did a remarkable job of compiling this enormous vocabulary of literary Persian at the end of the 19th century. If your goal is to read classical Persian literature, this dictionary is a must-have.

Steingass includes full vocalizations for all words, which is very helpful. His system of vowel transliteration is quite antiquated, though. It is the old British system, which seems to have been imported from Arabic, to which it is much better suited. However, those familiar with Modern Persian pronunciation will be able to figure out the correct equivalents for Steingass' choices.

I own the Manohar reprint pictured here. The paper is cheap and tears easily, but the quality of printing is actually pretty good. Most pages are clearly printed. While a few are slightly blurry or light, they are always legible. Furthermore, unlike some Indian publications I have seen, the text is well lined up on almost all pages. The margins don't vary wildly and on all but a very few pages, the edge of the text is parallel with the edge of the paper. Where the text is at a bit of an angle, it is not a great angle and does not look too awkward. (I include these comments because I suspect that other readers might, as I did, feel some trepidation about forking out money for an Indian reprint, as some of these are of rather bad quality.) Overall, I am quite happy to settle for less than wonderful paper in exchange for a very reasonable price for this tome. European or American reprints of books of comparable size can run several times the price.

For more contemporary Persian, you should consider the small but handy Persian-English English-Persian Learner's Dictionary or the larger and more complete The Combined New Persian-English and English-Persian Dictionary.

I wanted this Persian dictionary to be the last. I hate lugging around dictionaries, especially large ones, from place to place. Luckily, my organization bought this for me, because if I had purchased it, I probably would have returned it. Both this dictionary, and Hayyim's, are available online via University of Chicago. I figured that this dictionary would come in handy in a location without internet access. However.

As I have found with other language references printed in Pakistan and India, the quality is horrid. Pages are thin, print quality ranges from tolerable to unreadable, the font is obtuse, and for the Persian, obviously outdated. In short, the production of this reference very much negates the knowledge contained therein.

Conclusion: since this reference is available online, there is little advantage to purchasing it, especially in light of its flaws. Still, if you require a printed, comprehensive dictionary of Persian, more comprehensive than Aryanpour, and certainly Dehghani, it's your Ben Kenobi, with bad type. Of course, there is no English to Persian, but who needs that anyway?

Just like another reviewer has metioned, the paper is a bit on the cheap side. The printing of the English words are clear, but the printing of the Persian words are sometimes blurry. Fortunately, there is transliteration, in English alphabet letters, of each and every word, therefore clarifying the spelling of the Persian words completely. And it is comprehensive to the full extent of the word. So far, I have never been disappointed when looking for a proper Persian word and it's meaning. It may sound pricey, but actually it is economical in the long run, as you do not have to look for another Persian/English dictionary. This reviewer is Persian, and has done upto class six in a Persian school during his childhood, but takes his hat off to Mr.Francis Steingass who obviously was not a Persian, but has difinitely done a thorough job when preparing this dictionary.

The Librairie Du Liban edition seems best for anyone who consults Steingass frequently. It's much larger than the Indian reprints, with big, clear type, and decent paper. The binding is tough, too. I carried my copy in a backpack for close to a year in Central Asia and it's still tight. For me the hard copy is easier to use than U Chicago's online version. Worth paying double or triple the price of the wretched and tiny AES edition, if you can find it.

This book has a lovely leather cover with a delightful feel. The dictionary gives more examples of use and context than other Farsi-English dictionaries I've used. It also gives foreign-language origins, and seems more complete that my other dictionaries.

There are a couple of oddities (not negatives; just oddities). The first is that compared to other Farsi dictionaries, this one is backwards. Holding the binding to the left and opening what one would expect to be the back cover, one encounters the letter "Alef." The second is that the pronunciation guide seems to be either Arabic, Afghani, or at least scholarly. It does not match the pronunciation I remember from living in Iran 30 years ago. For instance, the dictionary represents the letter I would call "vav" with a "w." Most Iranians I knew could not even pronounce a "w." Nearly all the instances in this dictionary that are transcribed as "w" I would call a "v," with a very few that I would have called "u" or "o."