Customer Reviews

Hippocrene Albanian-English English-Albanian Practical Dictionary (Hippocrene Practical Dictionary)

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I enjoy using this dictionary, however there it is plagued in incompletenesses. For example, on p.11, the Transliteration Guide is incomplete. Otherwise a pretty good source; wish it included more words.

I spent 6 weeks in Albania and used Stefanllari's dictionary much more than Hysa's phrasebook. My copy is a Third Printing 1999 and 9000 entries. The cover is actually a kind of cream tomato color and not the more appropriate Albanian Red.

The entries are in a decent readable font, but you'll need to spend time learning the abbreviation codes when you are going from Albanian to English e.g. mb.=adjective.

What this dictionary lacks is contextual information to help you choose the word with the proper meaning. Albanians have it easier because their word endings spell the meaning out for them. But going from English to Albanian is tedious to get correct.

For example, the entry for the English preposition 'to' is
to /tu:/ prep. nė; drejt; deri; nga
You can look up those four Albanian words in this book to help give you context, but it would be so much more useful if the entry explained it here.

To his credit, Stefanllari provides occasional idiomatic expressions, but it is hard to feel confident using any of them when the basic entries lack their context explanations.

Overall, this book is still your best travel dictionary option due to it's portable size and 9000 entries. Combine this with Hysa's phrasebook and you will have a decent set for your travel purposes. You will find yourself using it a lot when you fail to find the entry in Hysa.