Customer Reviews

A Frequency Dictionary of German: Core Vocabulary for Learners (Routledge Frequency Dictionaries) (English and German Edition)

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The authors state rather sheepishy that this text is to be used in conjunction with a good dictionary. Well, that is certainly true. The authors give you the words but incredibly leave out of the listing 1)any indication of what the plural of the noun might be 2)no verb forms other than the infinitive is listed, even for irregular verbs. 3)No indication whether the verb is separable or not (unless you can pick that up in the sample sentence given with each word - Oh did I also fail to mention that none of these sample sentences are translated into English. 4)How about indications for when a word has an irregular stress? Nope, not that either. You say this is for learners. Then don't make us constantly have to look all this information up in a dictionary because you can't take the time, trouble or expense to do it. Not having the 3 verb forms and the plurals form of nouns included is simply unnaceptable. This is work you could have done once instead of making everyone who might purchase this book do the look-ups again and again. Having paid over $30.00 for this 189 page book, I think I have a right to expect that much.

As a college German instructor and textbook author, I can easily say that this book is an amazing contribution to the field of learning German. The reviewer below has very false expectations of what a frequency dictionary is supposed to do. Essentially, a frequency dictionary helps learners prioritize their learning so they know what words are most important to learn, and they authors have done just that. Their list is based on a very detailed and comprehensive study of contemporary German to provide a list that reflects the ways in which both the spoken and written German language is actually used today. The authors themselves indicate that the book should be used in conjunction with other learning materials so that students can see how the word is used in a variety of contexts, and that just using this book to memorize vocabulary will be less effective. Perhaps they left out the information the previous user is so desperately looking for to force learners to have to go to those other contexts. That's the process that maximizes learning in the end.

The authors of this book make no claims that they do not fulfill. In fact, I think they understate the usefulness of their book. Without this book, learners can't know which words are the most important ones to learn and might just go about memorizing words they'll never see or use again. This book can help students prioritize learning, making vocabulary acquisition more efficient and effective, and thus helping students improve language comprehension more quickly.

I highly recommend this book for serious students and especially for German instructors!

This has a good vocabulary of over 4034 words, although only 4034 are defined in the second group. Overall, I think it is FAIRLY well done. There ARE a few things I don't like, but I write this having seen the SPANISH version as well!

The first group, which is in order of frequency(most to least), has sections where common categories(such as fruit or animals) are listed EVEN if they aren't in the top 4034. Usage is also shown. Unlike some frequency lists, a word counts ONLY in its base form. Verstehe will NOT be listed, for example, because the base form of verstehen IS.

The second group includes only the first 4034 of the first group, but they are listed in alphabetical order. The english word/s is/are also shown.

The THIRD group is like the second, but ONLY a limited number are listed, and they are listed in alphabetic order under word form. So, I like it, but I wish it were more complete, like your spanish version.

What I like about this book:

This book is well-laid out and well thought out. The frequency list of 4304 words comprises the bulk of the text and each words is given with its frequency, part of speech (+gender for nouns), an English gloss, a short example sentence and the number of occurrences per million words and an indication of the register that they most commonly occur in. In the back is an alphabetical index for the words so that the location of a particular word in the frequency-sorted list can be found. A number of additional lists are included (eg: collocations with 'Zeit'). All the features needed are there.

What I dislike about this book:

Not much. It does everything it sets out to. The glosses are sometimes narrow, but with a limit of 3 per word, they do a good job in the space available. Since this is a frequency dictionary, the most important part is an accurate and easy to reference frequency list, which it has.

Who might use this book:

A learner who wants to be efficient about time use. For example, although Langenscheidts Grossworterbuch Deutsch als Fremdsprache differentiates between 22 different uses of the verb 'setzen', and this may seem like a lot of work for a learner to work through, this dictionary tells you that 389 words in every million are setzen, so learning to use it properly is a good use of your time. Übersetzen, however, with just 3 different meanings, only occurs 45 times in every million - that is, setzen occurs 8.5 times for every instance of übersetzen. The one to learn first is clear. Starting with the most common word (you guessed it, der/die/das) and working down can be a good use of time. Of course you need to use other resources to properly learn the word, but this dictionary shows you which ones to do the work on.

Another use can be better understanding words whose definitions are often self-referential. For example, daher, deshalb and deswegen are all synonyms, and this dictionary gives you an idea of which is the most common (deshalb is #264, daher #330 and deswegen #833, so deshalb is far more common than deswegen).

Where to from here:

If you want to learn vocabulary, and use your time well, buy this. But of course you will need a number of other resources to learn the words well. This book effectively guides your study.

For the serious learner of any language, a good frequency dictionary is always an invaluable tool. While learning a language always require learning new vocabulary, a frequency dictionary is a great help to ensure that you learn the most relevant vocabulary of the language you're studying. So why is this frequency dictionary bad?

1. Too limited. 5000 words isn't much, there are many books on learning German vocabulary that will give you more. These include Using German Vocabulary (Fagan) or Mastering German Vocabulary (Schnorr & Forst). In comparison, the outstanding Russian frequency dictionary by Brown, also published by Routledge, lists 10.000 words. For a frequency dictionary, 5000 is too little.

2. No plurals. German plurals are famously hard to master and a book that doesn't include them diminishes its value for any language learner. To compare once again with Brown's Russian frequency dictionary, it always show other grammatical forms of the words it lists.

3. Bad layout. Many learners of a language, myself included, want neat tables - one with the words in the foreign language and one with the words in English. In that way, you can easily test yourself by covering the table in English and check if you remember the word. Most good resources for learners are organised in this way, but not this book.

So all in all, the value of this book is pretty limited. Yes, it is one of the few modern frequency dictionaries for German, but there are other options that will give you more German words with a better layout.