Customer Reviews

Pocket Burmese Dictionary: Burmese-English English-Burmese (Periplus Pocket Dictionaries)

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

 

 

On one hand, this dictionary is reasonably priced and small enough to fit conveniently in a handbag or backpack. Therefore you are likely to have it when you need it.

On the other hand, it is extremely limited. On page iv of the introduction it says that it contains 3,000 of the most frequently countered Burmese words. 3,000 is hardly anything and much less than is normally used in daily speech.

Whenever I've tried to use this dictionary, I've often run into problems. i.e. the other day when trying to teach a refugee how to drive the roadbook stated "Research shows that awareness is the key to reducing risk of collisions."

"Research," "awareness," "risk" and "collision" are all words that are not in this dictionary.

There are some words in this dictionary that are not in the Lonely Planet Phrasebook, but not terribly many. I still carry it around when I visit refugees but I don't really expect much from it.

I work with Myanmar/Burma refugees who have come to Charlotte, NC. When I found this dictionary on amazon.com, I was "over the moon" with joy. My students will be so glad to have this dictionary for easy reference when out in public.

Every since I started studying Burmese, I have been on the lookout for a solid "pocket" Burmese-English/English-Burmese dictionary to carry around instead of retreating to later lookup the words from the large dictionaries on my bookshelf. Alas, after finding several small dictionaries they were either inadequate, poorly organized or just plain too difficult to use. Nothing seemed to bridge the gap. And as much as I appreciate phrasebooks, their dictionaries in the back tend to be very limited.

But this dictionary is exactly what I've been looking for! As a low-intermediate speaker of Burmese, I took this dictionary along on a recent trip to Myanmar and found it quite useful for day-to-day conversations. I was able to look up many words quickly and likewise when conversations came to a halt, some of my Burmese friends were able to find the word they were looking for and show it to me so I could understand.

Is this dictionary perfect? No. Could it include some more words? Yes. But I loved it and found it quite helpful. And since the product only advertises itself as a pocket dictionary and not more, I give it five stars.

A dictionary of this size could hold more word translations and meanings than this one does. This book is OK but limited in number of words available.