Customer Reviews

The New Oxford Picture Dictionary (English/Russian Edition)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

If only they could show a sample page - it would give all the lowdown a prospective purchaser would need. Most of the caveats I saw in the other reviews are true enough, but this is still the best basic ESL resource I've come across (both the monolingual and the English/Russian version). My only negative is that a few items are a bit dated (or maybe that's the book's British roots and it's an item common across the pond but not here). But the thematic approach works great and I'd give this a slight edge over the line of also worthy Bill Bliss illustrated dictionaries.

We got this book to assist us with teaching our soon to be adopted 14 year old daughter English. The pictures are all coded with a number, and at the base of each page, there is a Russian and English word for what the numbered item is, in the picture. The dictionary shows various situations as one large picture: For example, each room of the house, and each item in each room is labeled. Also, school rooms, bus stops, all kinds of foods and "things". Airports, relationships (family tree), body parts, clothes, feelings, situations and so much! This is an awesome tool to use in communicating with someone of any age who speaks Russian and needs to communicate to you in English. (Or vice versa). I will also know by our daughter pointing to a picture and then the number associated with it, that we are talking about the exact same thing. She can read the Russian word, and I will tell her (pronounce) the English word. So, we are sure to be talking about the same exact thing. Paperback and easy to carry around. Very clever!

The Oxford Picture Dictionary for Russian seems geared toward Russian students of English. It would be more useful for this if it included International Phonetic Alphabet beside the English words on the picture pages. Instead, non-IPA pronunciation guides are buried in an index. For the student of Russian, it's almost useless. Russian is fairly phonetic--if you know where the accent falls. Unfortunately, accent marks are completely absent, and the two dots of letter <yo> are never shown, confusing it with <ye>. (While standard written Russian omits these marks, pedagogical texts should include them.) A student who learned the word for "bill, receipt" from this book would mispronounce <schyot> as <schyet>, eliciting great confusion and then laughter from his Russian friends. Also, when the book gives a plural noun, you can't always predict the singular form. For other nouns irregular plural forms aren't given. Noun gender is never given and sometimes can't be predicted. The only way to make this book useful for correctly acquiring Russian vocabulary is to look up all 2400+ words, a daunting task!

This is a very good book, but the online information failed to show that it is meant for Russians learning English (such as the ESL students mentioned in another review), not for English-speakers learning Russian. So, I was disappointed to get a book with no pronunciation help for the Russian words, when that is what I had expected.

As a department of defense trained russian linguist, i can tell you that this book is useful for english speakers learning russian. Russian pronunciation is fairly straightforward, and should only take a couple of days to learn. (if you don't have a source for listening, you don't have any business trying to learn a language like russian anyhow) After pronunciation is learned, this book is an excellent learning tool, because it is far more useful to learn the language using the cyrillic. This helps both russian language reading skills, and sight retention of foreign words, one of the hardest and most useful things to learn.No, it's not an easy book to learn with, so some might be turned off, but if you're truly committed to working hard at learning russian, than this book will teach valuable skills and vocabulary.

I am an English teacher and having eight Russian students with no English vocabulary apart from yes/no, and Russian not one of the languages I know, I used this dictionary to communicate with my Russian students. It worked. The pictures are clear, the reference to the word in Russian and English is easily traceable from the picture and it did work to build vocabulary. As you start getting to grips with Russian (or English) you will definetly need a 'heavier' dictionary. Thus after three months I do not need this book any longer as all the students can speak English but I couldn't have done it without this book. A must buy.

As an ESL tutor I simply love these books. Each page provides a lesson's worth of vocab for practice in sentences. The latter pages (eg. prepositions) are less useful when tutoring someone illiterate in their own language, especially if the tutor is not bilingual, but because the pictures are so clear, even point-and-say usually works. True, these books don't have any pronunciation guides for Russians learning English or Americans learning Russian, but they are an excellent tool for tutoring; I don't expect everything from a picture dictionary that I would from interactive language software.

I also used this with my adopted children from Russia (then 6, 9 & 11) and found it extremely useful. It was easy for them to locate a picture they wanted to name, and made communnication much simpler!

Although its great to have pictures and words together, especially for those of us who learn faster with visual aids, this book is difficult to use for native English speakers. Why? Because accent marks are not provided, nor declensions, nor the two dots over the "e" that distinguish between the letters "yo" and "ye." In other words, in order to benefit from this dictionary, an English speaker has to look up every word in a separate dictionary to find out all the above information when learning the words. Otherwise, what is learned will be only part of what is needed. So, since English is my native language, I give this book 2 stars. It would be great to find a book like this one meant for learners of Russian.

I took Russian for nine years in the Chicago Public Schools, and this was one of my greatest references. Granted, it is not meant to be the ONLY tool a student of Russian will use. I compare this book to Richard Scarry's Greatest Word Book Ever, except with Russian words for everything pictured. And don't be fooled by the "Picture Dictionary" title. This is not merely for children. I am 24 years old, and trying to re-learn some Russian, and am still using this great book. This would be a great reference for any student of Russian.