Barron's German-English Dictionary: Worterbuch Deutsch-Englisch

I have studied French (can read and write in a fairly literate fashion), Spanish (functionally fluent) and Italian (still more or less a beginner) before taking on German. Of the four, German seems the most complex structurally and the most alien in relation to English. Due to my having a desire to master a language once I start, I have used a lot of materials to learn these various languages and a good dictionary has always been critically important to me (I seem to end up owning several for each language, adding as I found new features that were missing in a prior dictionary). I have several German-English dictionaries which I have used in studying, two are more comprehensive in number of words defined, examples and definitions (specifically a Duden-Oxford and Harper Collins). However, this Barron's dictionary is the most useful of the group for me as a new student. The thing I like about in comparison to other dictionaries are that it includes a number of features that are not common to all German-English dictionaries. For the most important verbs, it has the 3rd person singular, 3rd person simple past and the past participle. As I am learning, with those three pieces of data, you can go a long way to dealing with conjugating German verbs. Type is larger and more legible than the other German dictionaries I own. That is a big deal for aging eyes. In general, the definitions are very good and only someone who is virtually German-proficient or studying at the third or fourth year of a German major would probably ever need the more complete definition set that can be found in a much more bulky and expensive dictionary. I have run across German words in my reading that aren't in this dictionary but, not surprisingly given the way German strings words together to form new compound words, often aren't in the larger dictionaries either. The Appendices add a wealth of information on articles (the a, an, and the of German); declension of nouns; declension of adjectives; tabular examples of verb conjugations; information tables for pronouns (personal, possessive, reflexive, demonstrative, relative, interrogative); lists of prepositions controlling accusative and dative cases; list of irregular verbs with important forms for each verb; tables of both German prefixes and suffixes; and more. The Appendices include a lot of information that is very useful and generally must be found in a German grammar. My satisfaction with the dictionary is partly because now that I am further into German study, I see what tools I need in a dictionary and they are in this volume. At the same time I bought this volume I purchased the Barron's Spanish-English Dictionary -- one copy for me and one for each of my grandchildren for their use in Spanish class because of a similar group of Appendices (although Spanish thankfully doesn't have declensions and cases). The Appendices alone are in my judgement worth the price of the volume -- a dictionary is esse

This is a thick book, and is best used on your desk; you can't carry it around. It seemed outstanding to me, from limited use. However, I knowledge of German is not extensive, so I'm not the best judge.

It has a soft-plastic/vinyl cover, which is better than a heavy hardcover, and round edges. You can easily find the page where words with a particular letter begin by looking on the first page and then on the side (I can't explain it better). To download the e-dictionary, you have to use the password which you can find on a card attached to the last page. The website will ask you to type specific words from the dictionary to make sure you have it. The e-dictionary is a Mobipocket book. You can search through it, but unfortunately if you search for a form of the word other than the base form, it won't redirect you to the base form like a computer program could. In the dictionary, some German words and most English entries have IPA pronunciation guides (English compound words and phrases usually do not have it). The dictionary itself is 1077 pages, and there are 120 more pages with German grammar and 50 pages with English grammar (explained in German). In total, it has 1254 pages. One strange thing is that the user guide for the German-English section is given in German and for the English-German part - in English. If somebody needs to use a German-English dictionary, he may not know enough German, so how is he going to read the user guide? However, it's only half a page of text for each of the two parts, so I guess you can try to translate it with the dictionary itself.

I bought this based on other reviews, because I just started German class. The dictionary has slang and certain curse words, as well as standard words. It provides usefull tips throughout, and has a comprehensive section with verb conjugations, 'false friends' (words spelled the same, but with different meanings, and more that I havent explored. The cover is vinyl, which makes it much harder to destroy if you're like me and just throw it into your bag. My ONLY complaint is that the electronic download isn't Mac compatible (although I knew that when I bought it). HIGHLY RECOMMEND!!!!

Easy to use, stylish. Also, you can put the dictionary on your desktop using Mobipocket Reader, very helpful. A great buy for the money.