Customer Reviews

Swedish-English/English-Swedish Dictionary & Phrasebook (Hippocrene Dictionary & Phrasebooks)

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

 

 

In general, the translations in this little dictionary and phrasebook are correct. Unfortunately, however, there are several errors in editing. For example, on page 80 we read "Consumption of alcohol in public places is permitted in Sweden." Presumably this was supposed to say that it is NOT permitted in Sweden. In addition, the type doesn't always show the accent marks over the letters. For example, in the glossary on page 106, we find "svara" defined as meaning "to curse, to swear." In fact, however, "svara" (without two dots over the first a) means "to answer," and "svära" (with two dots over the first a) means "to curse, to swear." This is a significant difference! This failure to print the accent marks correctly is evident on many pages of the book (and it appears to be a printing error, not an error by the authors).

First of all, I didn't buy this version of Hippocrene's Swedish-English dictionary, but the larger one, so I have never actually seen this book. But I was shocked to find out (once I began studying Swedish more intensively) that my version of Hippocrene does NOT tell you whether the nouns are "ett" or "en" words! My God, how could these boneheads have decided to create a dictionary about the Swedish language without this essential information? It makes the book nearly useless, and I have had to start over and buy a new one. I don't have any recco's for a dictionary yet, but I am going to try Prisma. Try to get a dictionary that tells you whether nouns are common or neuter gender, and also how the nouns look in the definite and indefinite plural. The latter is the hardest part of Swedish to learn, in my opinion.

This book has lots of little hints other good books are missing. I like some of the format, and would have given it at least 4 stars, if it were not for the fact that there are no pronunciation guides in the dictionary. Swedish pronunciation makes French pronunciation look like a day at the beach, but yet there is only one Swedish dictionary with easy-to-read phonetic pronunciation guide for each word, that I know of in English. It is the Swedish Berlitz pocket dictionary (not to be confused with the phrasebook & dictionary, which has excellent pronunciation for the phrases, but not in the dictionary portion of it) See my reviews for the Berlitz books.

If you are thinking of investing in the much bally-hooed Rosetta Stone. Save your money.

Rosetta Stone is a nice little "stone" in the building materials and tools of learning a language, but that's all it is, a rough stone at that. More like a glorified giant-sized Sesame Street language program for kids, but to say that is berating Sesame Street a bit, which does a much better job. You still very much need to use grammar books and dictionaries, lesson books, etc. if learning a language from "scratch" and while you are using Rosetta Stone. There are no language-specific built-in appendices, no dictionary, no language translation guides of any kind, no footnotes pointing out grammatical anomalies etc. (of which there are many in every language.)Nothing. Zilch.

There are just phrases in text accompanied by the audio (if you select audio accompaniment) in Swedish, to fit the pictures, and you have to guess, either, or, depending on your choice lesson. But none of these many preferences is more than just a quiz game. ROSETTA STONE HAS NO LEARNING TOOLS.

It seems the creators/programmers of Rosetta Stone made the same basic program template of photo pictures for all language suites they sell, and they just changed the voice and text for the different languages. What a money-maker! And what a rip-off! I would bet they spent more on marketing Rosetta Stone than creating it.

Check out my review on Rosetta Stone's Swedish package.