Estonian-English Dictionary Eesti-Inglise Sonaraamat (English and Estonian Edition) [Hardcover]

Paul Saagpakk (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Estonian

Product Details

• Hardcover: 1191 pages
• Publisher: Yale Univ Pr; 1ST edition (July 1982)
• Language: English, Estonian
• ISBN-10: 0300028490
• ISBN-13: 978-0300028492
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,953,790 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #15 in Books > Education & Reference > Dictionaries & Thesauruses > Foreign Language > Estonian

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not recommended, November 9, 2000

By 

Drifter Invisible (Estonia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Estonian-English Dictionary Eesti-Inglise Sonaraamat (English and Estonian Edition) (Hardcover)

Paul Saagpakk is an Estonian who, like tens of thousands of Estonians, escaped during the Second World War. He lived and worked in Sweden and USA and became a renowned liguist. This dictionary is his most important work on which he has worked, as far as I know, for more than twenty years and which was originally released in 1982.

It is an unfortunate truth that many Estonians abroad lose their natural perception for the mother tongue while under heavy influence of the native languages of the countries they live in. Furthermore, it is characteristic for the tragedy of our people that the war refugees were practically excluded from communication with Estonia. That is the reason why a half of a century of the development of the Estonian language has passed by Prof. Saagpakk.

Unlike English, Estonian standardized written language is not very old. While an English text written 60-70 years ago doesn't look archaic to us today, Estonian has gone through major changes since Prof. Saagpakk left Estonia. Unfortunately, Mr. Saagpakk hasn't regarded those changes in his dictionary. The language you will find in this book reflects the stand of the 1930's. It contains many words and expressions that, according to today's language standard, are considered errors inadmissible even to school pupils. For a contemporary Estonian, Prof. Saagpakk's language sounds archaic, much of it takes a little thought to understand and some words are used in a pre-WWII meaning, although their meaning is different today.

On the other hand, I'm sorry to say that this is by far the largest Estonian-English dictionary that exists, which is the reason why it's widely used even in Estonia. For us, however, the problem is not so bad - we the native speakers are able to recognize Prof. Saagpakk's mistakes and usually succeed to figure out what he actually meant by one or another weird expression. (Though we won't, of course, find newer words and expressions in this book.) Besides, a little laugh once in a while is only healthy. The foreigners, however, should use Prof. Saagpakk's "dictionary" with the greatest caution and not to be mistaken to think that this is the contemporary Estonian language. If you absolutely need to translate something from Estonian into English and you really don't have any other source for reference, go ahead and use this book, but don't count on it as the authoritative source and don't use is as a help when learning Estonian.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars thorough, December 30, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Estonian ­English Dictionary (Paperback)

I think it is the best Estonian - English dictionary ever written! The variety of words is wide. Although I am a native Estonian speaker, I have found many Estonian words from this dictionary which I haven't heard about. I consider the dictionary very thorough.