Customer Reviews

The Oxford Russian Dictionary

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I had used three other Russian/English dictionarys but this has it all. It even has some 4 letter words you might find offensive. My wife is Russian and our communication has improved because of this fantastic dictionary. The meanings of words have been well researched and are translated exactly. I would recommend this reference for anyone learning Russian or for the Russian needing an English word equivilant.

I would like to clarify some points mentioned below by other reviewers. First of all it is true that the Russian pronunciation is not given, but neither is it given in any other English-Russian dictionary that I know of, or, for that matter, in any Russian dictionary. This is because in Russian each sound is pronounced like it is written. So basically you have to learn the Russian alphabet. So this is not for real beginners. One can't blame the dictionary for this because it was created as an aid, not a teaching course. Still there are some grammatical rules you'll have to learn if you want to pronounce the Russian words correctly, not too difficult rules in my opinion. Basically it all comes down to the accent (very simple stuff). I will resist giving you examples and instead I will give you the websites where you can learn for yourself. If one wants to learn Russian from scratch (or almost from scratch) I recommend that he visits these two websites. They are free and they should be useful if the person wants to know if he really wants to pursue learning Russian before spending money on books, it will help him decide whether he is sure that he is serious about this.

To recite the Russian alphabet: http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Track/7635/alphabet.html

Russian grammar and to learn how the letters of the Russian alphabet are pronounced in context:
http://www.alphadictionary.com/rusgrammar/index.html

After studying the above websites I would recommend, for the beginner, to buy books like "Russian Course, The New Penguin : A Complete Course for Beginners", or "Russian Stories (Russkie Rasskazy): A Dual-Language Book" if he is more advanced.

Like with any language the real difficulty is memorizing and learning the actual words, not the grammar.
But a person can spend his entire life as a native English-speaker and still find some words that are outside of frequent usage that he doesn't know how to pronounce; this will never happen with languages like Russian or Greek. Thus the grammar is a bit more difficult to learn in those languages but it serves you for life.

I agree that this dictionary is insufficient if you're reading heavy literature. But if you know enough Russian to read Dostoyevsky then you should know enough Russian to be able to visit an online Russian bookstore (like http://www.ozon.ru/ or http://www.bolero.ru/index.html or http://www.kniga.com/books/default.asp?) and find a good multi-volume Russian dictionary for yourself.

I have many Russian English dictionaries, including some you can only get in Russia and some written entirely in Russian and this is by far the most complete and helpful dictionary I have. I use it almost exclusively.

I must confess though that I don't use the English-> Russian part very often. I'm usually translating from Russian. I usally learn new words from movies and books and am not looking up so many words just from English. In correspondence I use it and it always has what I need.

You can look up some of the most clever dialogue in films with this dictionary.

Of course, a dictionary is not a grammar book and there are stylistic things about Russian that create ennumerable combinations of useage that a dictionary cannot address.

There are some complaints I have but they are not addressed by any other dictionaries I have seen. For example, the ppp is troublesome because it's hard get the stress right and they try to put all the most common ones in there but they miss them sometimes but so do all the other dictionaries. In that case you have to guess from grammar rules or consult the real dictionaries for such that are written totally in Russian.

The only places it fails me are in situations where you need to go to a Russian dictionary that is written entirely in Russian. There are a few classics used there. It would not be possible in general to create such a dictionary for English speakers because the assumptions about language familiarity and grammar could not be met by any but fairly advanced users and in that case, why not just use the actual dictionary Russian speakers use?

If you want to buy one dictionary, get this one. Don't get the concise version though, spend the money and get the full version. It's worth it!

As a Russian translator in the U.S. military, I have used this edition as well as earlier ones in my work, and I have to say that this is an improvement upon the others, which were already very good. A question for the reviewer who wrote that the back cover contained spelling mistakes in Russian: Where are they? I know the spelling system of the language quite well, and reading the back cover several times, I could find neither spelling mistakes nor incorrect case endings. As for word choice in Russian, it could be that native speakers would have phrased some things differently (as a non-native speaker, it's hard for me to judge), but the Russian text is certainly grammatically correct and the meaning is clearly conveyed.

This is a big thick heavy volume printed in nice large
font on fine white paper, and it is mostly useless.
I am a native Russian speaker and pretty good in English,
having studied it for good quarter a century. I was looking
for a decent dictionary to look up more difficult words,
and I was specifically looking for one volume two-way
Russian-English dictionary for ease of use.
This dictionary turned out to be a waste of money. It only
has the most primitive words both in Russian and English
sections, no slang (and I am talking standard slang, not
street speak), definitions are poor, very few synonyms.
It may be good for beginners but as a reference dictionary
I would not recommend it to anybody.

It's a very good dictionary, many words, phrases; it is promoted as a reference for people studying Russian. But its English-to-Russian part is definitely not the best in the field, it's evident that it was written by English speaking people. The back cover not only suffers from wrong choice of words, but even contains severe spelling mistakes.

Usually my reviews pertain to classical-music since that's my biggest field of interest by far! However, of all the several dictionaries I've so far been consulting relative to various translations and other work that these days has necessitated my dealing with the Russian language, this most certainly is the best! Pocket and concise dictionaries just won't hack it with my type of work; and this one truly is worth it!!! It has a good word-database as well as lots of expressions covered; also good is that it gives the stress for all the Russian words (VERY VITAL in that language!!). Most highly recommended!

We have been using the Oxford dictionaries for years. The Mini is a fantastic book. Much better than most out on the market that are much larger (size) but have fewer needed words.
This is the big brother for that one. Easier to read and handle.

We still come across words that don't translate accurately (E->R) the word: Silly translates as glupi. However, it does not convey the meaning properly (glupi in Russian is closer to dumb/stupid than goofy, frolicking fun).

The big thing you will notice with the Oxford books is the words used in them are much more common to everyday language in both languages. Over teh last 7 years we've tried many different Rus/Eng dictionaries, but constantly find ourselves disappointed with them and keep returning to Oxford.

I've had this for a short while and have already discovered several words missing, that sent me scurrying back to my Katzner, where the words were clearly defined. Katzner appears to have more phrases and usage examples too. The Oxford also feels cheap for its price - the paper and nondescript fonts and page design are disappointing. Only a couple of pages of extras on grammar, verb conjugations, and letter samples. The Oxford is good to have, but if I had to carry only one Russian dictionary around, it would be Katzner.

Recently married a Russian woman, she speaks good English & I'm learning to speak and write Russian. However we can't convey some of our thoughts. This book has been invaluable in assisting us to communicate. It is indispensable as an aid for writing, grammar & etc. If you are serious about the language I wouldn't suggest you buy anything else but this one.