Customer Reviews

The New Oxford Picture Dictionary: English-Navajo Editon (The New Oxford Picture Dictionary (1988 ed.))

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, esp. given the dearth of teaching materials for any Native languages. But being shown how to say "brandy snifter" or "Pluto" in Navajo does make one wonder about the cultural applicability of these endeavors.

(This reminds me of the Duden dictionaries that used the same illustration-templates for every edition -- based on the German -- so that in the English-Thai edition, we could all be shown how to say "serving pot for boiled potatoes" in languages whose cultures had no such concept.)

In short, I worry that this is very inappropriate for Navajo culture. It may have /some/ useful vocabulary in it, but on the whole it seems very unreliable.

There aren't many references out there pertaining to the navajo language. Having a picture dictionary makes learning the words easier and more enjoyable. Yes it does look outdated due to the fact it was published in the late 80's but it is very thorough and makes memorization easier when you connect the word with the visual.

As one of the other reviewers indicates, I at first thought this book would be mostly useless -- translations for sea creatures and English fighter planes don't seem to be of much use in rural Navajoland. However, I find this very useful as a complement to other dictionaries, and it's also the most engaging for children to page through.

While a standard set of words means that some that don't apply to Navajo lives, the English and Navajo indexes in the back are great, and make it easy to look up a majority of the object nouns that you might need in learning Navajo.

Also, one greatly needed improvement for the index would be to add a phonetic pronunciation guide for the Navajo words -- oddly, there are phonetic guides to English in the back, but not to Navajo!

Excellent book written by a native speaker. Clear, high-quality printing, and the language is Standard Navajo. Good spelling, and so far I have found only one lone accent mark that I would disagree with. Worth every penny.