Customer Reviews

Traveler's Italian Dictionary: English-Italian/Italian-English (Cortina Dictionary)

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This is best Italian pocket dictionary for the traveler. It actually has the pronunciations of the Italian words (what a novel idea). It's verb summary is adequate and it includes the helping verbs (avere and essere) at the front of the list, where they can be quickly found (unlike the Berlitz dictionary where they are buried in with all the other verbs. It's shortcomings are that it includes fewer expressions and not as many entries at the Berlitz, but it's smaller and lighter. Go with this one for travel, especially if you're new to Italian.

I am an American that lives in a non-English speaking area of Italy. I had no Italian speaking experience before moving. Overal, this is a good dictionary with common needed words.

It has the pronunciation, but the rules for cia and gia are not Roman Italian (normalized Italy) and are wrong. Ciao (hi)is pronounced ch-ah-oh in English, not ch-ee-ah-oh. Giorno (day) is pronounced j-or-noh, not jee-or-noh. Saying the way they pronounce it makes you sound like an American.

The cover could be more durable.

I carried this with me for two weeks in Italy in 2010. I speak un po', so I was looking for a quick reference for signs, menus, and vocabulary that wasn't on the tip of my tongue (which was more than I thought when I arrived in country).

And I was constantly frustrated by not finding what I was looking for. It wasn't like I was searching for obscure terms, but just constructs that any tourist would run into. Half the time, I was disappointed.

Pros: stress indicated, although it is indicated at the end of the syllabe, unlike most other dictionaries.

Cons: lack of vocab; parts of speech not indicated all the time; grammar section is weak. I realize that a dictionary is not a grammar book, but it takes only a few more pages to include various verb conjugations and pronomial constructs, and a 300 pg book could spare a few extra pages to be more useful.

I'm not throwing this out, but I'm also not making this my travel dictionary for this year's trip. Not sure what will take its place, so you if have advice, I'd love to hear it.