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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Superlatif, April 29, 2002
My French didn't really take off until I started using a French-French dictionary for my reading, and this is the one I used.I cannot recommend it highly enough, but my enthusiam stems only in part from the high quality of this book in particular. Rather, in learning a language, having to decipher the definitions instead of having them handed to you makes a puzzle out of every word you don't know. So, after staring at the definition, when you finally realize what the word means, you're unlikely to forget its definition, since you figured it out yourself. I guess what I'm saying is that I found that when you yourself solve a riddle, there's a greater chance that you'll remember it. This is certainly not the case even with the best French-English dictionaries. This is a compact dictionary, yet impressively complete. Also, it's designed for learners of French (though not necessarily English-speakers), so the definitions, while completely in French, are crafted to be clear and user-friendly. The binding is excellent and the whole thing has a sturdy feel to it. Perhaps the thing I found the most useful was that for every definition, the word is used in an easy, readily-apprehended French sentence, making it supremely easy to guess the meaning in the event that the definition proper was nebulous. I have two gripes: 1. Bizarre particles found in your reading (like "eu," for example) aren't listed in this book, the way most French-English dictionaries refer you back to the root verb. So if you find something that you know is some odd conjugation of an irregular verb, this dictionary won't help you. 2. There is, alas, a printer's error with the '99 edition: Starting on page 359, the entire Introduction is reprinted upside down. Unlikely this would ruin your fun, though.
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by Harpercollins Publishers
by Charles Carlut
by William Edmiston
by E. Genouvrier
