Icelandic-English, English-Icelandic Dictionary (Hippocrene Concise Dictionary) [Paperback]

Arnold T. Taylor (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0870528017 | ISBN-13: 978-0870528019 | Publication Date: September 1989 | Edition: Revised

Over 10,000 entries in a concise and easy-to-use format
Alphabetical listings in both languages
Lists English irregular plurals and irregular English verbs
States gender of Icelandic nouns
A rare and valuable resource
Perfect for students or travelers

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Arnold R Taylor

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Hippocrene Books; Revised edition (September 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0870528017
• ISBN-13: 978-0870528019
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #459,238 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #66 in Books > Education & Reference > Foreign Languages > Instruction > Scandinavian

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Save your money for something better., August 3, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Icelandic-English, English-Icelandic Dictionary (Hippocrene Concise Dictionary) (Paperback)

This book was small, which fooled me into thinking it would be an indispensable pocket resource, packed with small type and tens of thousands of definitions. It's not.

Each page contains one column of text with rather large type, so the book simply doesn't contain much information. Many common words used in normal conversation were just missing.

Irregular forms of words weren't included on a large scale, requiring the reader to have pretty extensive knowledge of roots and how they may change irregularly depending on the case. Something like "this the plural dative form of word X" would be extremely useful with a language like Icelandic, but was almost completely absent from this book.

Nouns were listed with gender, but the book didn't say whether the nouns were weak or strong.

Another frustrating feature of this book was the inconsistent alphabetical ordering of words when non-roman characters like aelig, thorn, and eth were involved.

Other features missing from this book but present in some other dictionaries: Common phrases, basic grammar, conversational snippets.

Overall, this book is just too frustrating to be useful.

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Of no use to translators, or anyone else, April 26, 2003

By 

A. Butterfield (UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Icelandic-English, English-Icelandic Dictionary (Hippocrene Concise Dictionary) (Paperback)

.
This is a very small dictionary with just one column of large type on each page. There are 177 pages in the Icelandic-English section, so you can guess that there are in truth, not many words.

When you're doing a simple translation from English to Icelandic, this isn't too much of a problem, because if you're a native English speaker, you can always find a substitute word if you can't find the one you really wanted in this little dictionary.

But when it's the other way around, it's a big, big problem. To test it, I downloaded the daily free newspaper in Icelandic from the Morgunblaðið website, and attempted to translate some simple articles using this dictionary. Barely one in ten of the words used in the newspaper were in the dictionary.

So for that, it was useless.

You may find it more useful if you're good at recognising the irregular declensions, or at splitting compound words into their components, but even then, I think you will find that this dictionary simply doesn't have the vocabulary. In fact, it barely meets the definition of a dictionary.

Think of it as an expanded phrase book and you'll be nearer the mark but then, it doesn't contain any phrases.

Unfortunately, there isn't much else on the market unless you can get something from Iceland itself which would be expensive. If you really need to translate even the simplest of texts, this book won't do.

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't buy it: useless, September 19, 2003

By 

JR (the Netherlands) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Icelandic-English, English-Icelandic Dictionary (Hippocrene Concise Dictionary) (Paperback)

Most people who study Icelandic, buy this little book, but it's absolutely useless, because:

*1. It contains too few words.

Only 5,000 one way (a good dictionairy should contain at least 50,000).

*2. There are no inflection indications.

The most essential thing of the whole Icelandic language lacks (only gender is stated, and the strength of verbs, which is absoutely useless without other information).

*3. No word combinations, no proverbs whatsoever.

Needed for a good use of the language.

*4. Old-fashioned.

No modern words.

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The problem is, THERE ARE NO OTHER ICELANDIC DICTIONAIRIES AVAILABLE ON AMAZON. ...I hope I have helped you.