Customer Reviews

Langenscheidt's Universal Dictionary Croatian

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
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This is unsurpassed for a pocket dictionary. I have found few English/Croatian dictionaries to be as accurately translated or as in depth. Not perfect, but highly recommended -- and easy to carry around with you.

Just got back from Bosnia where this dictionary was absolutely indispensable. Ideal for people that already have some knowledge of the Serbo-Croat/ Croatian/ Bosnian/ whatever-you-wanna-callit language. Not to be confused with a phrasebook for travellers.

PROS: 1) Small. Fits in your pocket. Any pocket. 2) Comprehensive. Has 95% of the words you encounter in everyday conversation, and 90% of the words you encounter in writing. 3) Durable. The plastic cover is flexible, making it quick and easy to flip pages, while being tough and water resistant.

CONS: 1) I've bought a few of them, and sometimes they're missing the 'S' thru 'T' section of the Croatian. 2) Sometimes the shade of meaning for a word is not clear. 3) The dictionary does not indicate eastern or western variants of words. A native speaker is the only one that can tell you which of the listed synonyms they use.

All in all, you have to have this if you're trying to communicate on the fly.

Since the breakup of Yugoslavia, the trend of Serbian and Croatian, or Serbo-Croatian, if you please, has been conscious differentiation. The lexicon is sensitive: words like "bread" "hleb" vs "kruh" are ethnically charged. This dictionary has no accounting for that whatsoever and can place the user in awkward positions. (As I experienced first-hand while travelling in the area.) The dictionary favors the Serb variations. Furthermore, the dictionary lacks several words and explanations of others. This is a great brand for Western Languages, but is not at all thorough enough for the sensitive speaker of Serbian and Croatian.

I've been living in northeastern Bosnia for 6 months now and I'm learning the Bosnian language. I know some people will say that their is no such creature as the bosnian language, only croation and serbian, however, I live here and their are many words that are the same in all three dialects but their are certianly words that are pronounced differently in each of the three dialects. I like this dictionary. I've bought three of them. Only one of them was missing the S thru T section. One complaint I have about it is that it doesn't state which dialect the words are used in. If you have a little help from a local bosnian person though, this is a good and inexpensive book that will help you learn the language. It has plenty of good words to help you communicate in Bosnia.

This book is good for translating basic words and phrases. It is difficult to learn conversational Bosnian from this book, but I can pick out words. I work with a dozen or so Bosnians and they have helped me with my pronunciation. Bosnian-Croatian-Sebian languages are difficult to learn on your own. This book is convenient, my copy is very beat up from carrying it around in my pocket forever. It would be in your best interests to partner this book with a native speaker if available.

It's a nice small dictionary that is handy to carry around, but mine was lacking about 30 pages, and it's not something you'd want as a desktop as it's not easy on the eyes.

This book presents lots of words in a small space, but it is strangely hit-or-miss. For example, it lists 22 compound words beginning with "air-" but not including "airport." If you take a guess and look up "aerodrom" in the Croatian section, there it is, all right, defined as "airfield (mešunarodni) airport." In each half, the explanatory notes are in the language of the word list, as if it never occurred to the editors that an English-speaking person might be in Croatia and need to translate a new word in a hurry. "Mešunarodni" turns out to mean "international," so the reader is left in the dark as to what to call an ordinary regional airport. Such gaps are typical.

Irregular English plural nouns are listed with the singular forms (e.g. "feet" with "foot"), but not irregular Croatian plurals, which are common and unpredictable. No verb forms besides the infinitive are given for either language, in both of which irregular verbs abound.

Where the same word in English has several meanings or can be more than one part of speech, you're not told which Croatian equivalent is which, and often they're not even all there. For instance, after "bow" you get "[bou] luk; masna; [bau] naklon; nakloniti se." Some chasing around in the Croatian section, including looking up "oruzje," which is given as a note for "luk" and turns out to mean "weapon," will enable you to distinguish the bow that goes with arrows from the bow made of ribbon, and to identify the noun and verb for the polite gesture. Too bad if you needed to know what to call the front of a boat.

A really good pocket dictionary, Harrap's Italian (now sadly out of print) for instance, will consistently give you the right word in the right sense at a glance. This book, by comparison, is a clumsy toy. It seems at present, however, to be the best available in that size in the U.S.A.; I'm going to look for a better one when I get to Dubrovnik.

This is a very small, but very useful book. It contains basic words for everyday communication. It also contains some short phrases/idioms.

I also was in the region as a earlier poster puts it. With this Croatian or Hrvatski dictionary if you please. Firstly this Croatian dictionary is not favored to Serbian, this is blatantly untrue. As well as the fact that the official script/text for Serbian is Cyrillic. The earlier given example of bread as sensitive, which I checked in this Croatian dictionary, clearly shows the word "Kruh" ,which is the correct Croatian word for bread. In regards to lacking several words and explanation of others, I also suspect this to be untrue, because the earlier poster would be able to provide specific examples and clearly failed to provide evidence of this. I found this Croatian dictionary extremely thorough for its handy pocket size with over 30,000 entries.

I was in a course to learn Serbian-Croatian and we were given this dictionary. One of my teachers used to say that this was only good for a bullet-stopper. If you are a serious student of Serbian/Croatian/Bosnia I would recommend one of the Morton Benson dictionaries and the Magner introductory course to the languages.