Customer Reviews

Robertson's Practical English-thai Dictionary

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

 

 

After having spent several months learning the Thai language, it quickly became evident that a good dictionary is a must. Though the content of this dictionary is good...Robertson's dictionary lacks depth and cross-referencing. If you desire a quick and easy guide to Thai...do not purchase this book. "Conversational Thai in 7 days" provides the same material and is easier to use plus it includes some basic sentence structure. Another source that is just a good is the Lonely Planet Thai Phrasebook...not only does it provide grammar and vocabulary but it is small and covers a wide range of topics for such a small volume. If you really need a good dictionary for Thai then you should invest a little more and purchase Mike Simpson's "The English Thai Dictionary" published by The Theta People Co., Ltd. It cross references English to Thai and Thai to English. There are three cross references English to phonetic Thai to Thai script, Thai phonetic to Thai script to English, and finally from Thai script to Thai phonetic to English. Mike Simpson's book is a must investment for learning Thai.

During my first military exercise with the Thai army in 1993 I made the mistake of bringing this book to the jungle as my sole Eng-Thai resource. It was issued by my unit and it was compact enough. However, mere hours into the job it became painfully obvious that the amount of vocabulary listed was so limited as to not be of much use as a reliable resource for advanced-level translating/interpreting. I do recall, however, that the people who spoke Thai at the basic/beginner level seemed quite happy with the dictionary's content. Therefore, I would only recommend this dictionary for someone who intends to visit Thailand briefly and does not intend to pursue Thai language study beyond the beginner level. I would even submit that if one can wait until one arrives in-country, there are many similarly priced pocket dictionaries in bookstores all over Thailand that are much more comprehensive in content.

This is perhaps the worst example of a dictionary I have seen. It is almost unuseable and it is not clear at all what it sets out to achieve. There are dozens of small useful Thai dictionaries. Not recommended for anybody - it is useless to anybody learning Thai because it has absolutely no help on usage and the transliteration is appalling. Perhaps the only person who might find a use for it would be the tourist of the "point and grunt" variety.

I like it. I've been to Thailand a couple of times for 3 weeks each. Last time I took language classes with the AUA in Chiang Mai. This book was great for general conversation with people that were helping me learn Thai. If you have a basic conversational skills in Thai, you'll start to run accross words that this book doesn't have. If you're a beginner to Thai and traveling there, I think it's great. It's easy to read, they have a simple romanization scheme for helping you pronounce the thai words, and it has the words in thai writing (great for when you're using the book talking to a Thai-only speaker.) Don't expect this dictionary to be that useful for your deeper studies though. Oh yea, best of all, they don't use that stupid rominization that puts "r"'s everywhere. (korthort krap, nee narng-suu nung lem sawng rowy bart ru?)

Excellent for looking up basic vocabulary and ideas. Easy to follow, carry and use. I especially liked the inclusion of each translation in English and Thai forms and emphasis on proper tone. However, many words I frequently use were not included, nor were their synonyms, making it difficult to converse beyond the basics. All in all it is handy, well developed, and the note section at the end is very convenient.

This is an excellent, easy to carry handbook for the casual traveler. I carried this dictionary for two years (25 years ago) all over Thailand. I believe this edition is slightly expanded, but it will still slip into a shirt pocket, for a quick reference.

I did find one deficiency. I tried to look up "sister-in-law". It lists the terms for your older brothers wife,and your younger brothers wife. It did not list the term for your wifes younger or older sister. I guess people don't have in-laws on the wifes side.

Again, I highly recommend this book for the casual traveler to Thailand. It will not help you much on a business trip, but for pleasure, it is unbeatable

I'm a student of the Thai language and under any circumstances do not use this dictionary as a spelling reference! Many of the words are spelt incorrectly in Thai script (thus rendering it useless to me) and there is very little cross-referencing. Having said that, it was fine for wanting to know how to say a word in Thai. However, if you want more vocabulary for the same price, I would suggest So Sethaputra's dictionaries - they're fantastic.

The dictionary is more comprehensive than some of the beginning dictionaries I've seen, but there are a lot of tone mistakes. That's my biggest gripe.

This was the first dictionary I used when I moved to Thailand in 1997. It has one very big plus - Thai words are spelled (and alphabeticzed) using Roman letters, which makes it far more useful in conversation. So if I need to say "where", when I look it up it says "tee-nai", not a bunch of Thai characters. It's even better when hearing a Thai word and having no idea how to spell it in Thai. In this case, "tee-nai" is under "T". This feature makes it worth buying.

However, it has far too few words, and is badly out of date. The last (only?) edition was in 1969, and includes now-irrelevat words like "Communist terrorist".

The binding is also poor; you can expect to be holding it together with a rubber band within a few months.