Customer Reviews

Vietnamese-English/English Vietnamese Dictionary: With a Supplement of New Words, English-Vietn. (Hippocrene Standard Dictionary)

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

 

 

I am studying Vietnamese in college, and I have found that this book causes more confusion than it helps. It does not cleary define words, and it is inconsistent when translating from english to vietnamese and vietnamese to english. I would definitely not recommend this book. However, I did give it two stars (instead of one) because it did contain some obscure words I would not be able to find else where (like 'Jesus freak'). :)

This dictionary serves its purpose as a dictionary, giving Vietnamese equivalents for English words and English equivalents for Vietnamese words. If you expect any more than that, such as explanations on how to pronounce Vietnamese, grammatical explanations, or other resources that may helpful to the foreign learner of Vietnamese, you will have to look elsewhere. Things like sections on synonyms and antonyms in English would seem to make this dictionary more suited to the Vietnamese-speaking learner of English. The print quality isn't as horrible as it is in some Hippocrene dictionaries, but readability in some spots is iffy. This is especially a problem given the intricate array of accent marks that Vietnamese uses.

This seems to be made up of many obsolete words. There was no intoduction to explain how the Vietnamese alphabet is used - that it is in a different order than in English. It explains to the Vietnamese user how the English is pronounced but does not do the same for the English speaker.

This dictionary is just plain awful! Most of the basic words are present, but a lot of harder words are not. What good is a dictionary when some of the more complex vocabulary words aren't even defined in there? Moreover, there are typos on some of the pages. I don't know if every copy of this dictionary has this problem, but the one that I got had several Vietnamese-English pages missing in the end.

While I still give it 2 stars because it was useful in a couple of instances, I would not recommend using it overall. There are many better, newer dictionaries out there.

This is a good standard dictionary that can help any Vietnamese communicate with a Non-Vietnamese speaker and vice versa. It has been very helpful to my nephew,who is an English Second Language learner, in school and at home. It helps to explain to a Vietnamese user how English is pronounced. It's not the best or newest font, but it is readable. It is a simple good dictionary that helps to explain the meaning of words in Vietnameses and English.