HarperCollins Spanish College Dictionary 5th Edition

Every dictionary is a compromise of completeness vs. compactness. The smaller and handier the dictionary, the more incomplete it is. The arm-wrenching "unabridged" dictionaries are the best, but their sheer bulk makes them impractical for many uses. The "Pocket" and "Compact" dictionaries are helpful in a jam, but are always forced by their small size to leave out important nuances and shades of meaning. For most of us, the ideal dictionary for serious day-to-day reference will be books of this size. The "Collins Spanish College Dictionary" is about half the size and weight of the unabridged Oxford and Harper-Collins dictionaries, but is still very thorough and comprehensive. It has a number of features that I especially like when compared to other dictionaries in this class: - It includes a large number of useful examples and idiomatic phrases. - It has useful language tips embedded and highlighted in helpful places. For example, one such tip is: "Use el/un not la/una before feminine nouns beginning with stressed 'a' or 'ha' like agua." - Overall it seemed a bit more comprehensive than others (although the Oxford Concise was also quite good in this respect). - The translations that I checked were usually clearer and more straightforward. - Many headwords are immediately followed by descriptive synonyms in the same language. For example, the Spanish headword: "fantastico ADJ 1 (= imaginario) fantastic 2 (= estupendo) fantastic, great", clearly identifies "imaginario" and "estupendo" as alternate words of similar meaning. This can be very helpful in broadening the reader's understanding and vocabulary. - It contains 34 pages of "Spanish in Action", having sections on Useful Sentences, Correspondence, Email & Online Vocabulary, Telephone, Translation Tips, Numbers, Dates/Times, and Verb Tables (conjugation). I spent a couple of hours comparing this side-by-side with the Oxford Concise, the Larousse College Dictionary, the Larousse Standard Dictionary, and the Webster's New World International Spanish Dictionary. All were very good, and each had it's strong points. The Larousse College Dictionary had perhaps more comprehensive embedded language tips, and I thought the Oxford Concise had the clearest and most attractive layout. But the Collins seemed to edge out the others in overall completeness and clarity of definition.

For me, I really enjoy using this College dictionary. I've been studying the Spanish language for a few months, and this has been very helpful. There are a few things I appreciate about this dictionary: 1) Examples For a certain word, whether in Spanish or English, it'll have several examples or how to use the word in a sentence, both in English and Spanish. This is very helpful so you can compare how each sentence is constructed. 2) Colors Simply, it is great to have each main word in a light blue color and in bold to stand out from the rest of the words on the page. This is much better than the standard black and white in a lot of dictionaries, in my opinion. 3) Helpful Tips Sometimes if there is a certain word that has been misused often, they're be a box giving a small bit of advice, or some background on the word. For example, for the word NOTICE in English, there is a small colored box that says this: (warning symbol) notice (does not equal sign) noticia This is a great feature. Some other features: Words are identified with M or F if they are masculine or feminine, and it also gives the origins of a lot of words, if they're from Latin America, Spain, etc. Check this dictionary out at a local bookstore or your library! It's not a popular dictionary right now with the masses, but like you see with the other reviews, it's a wondeful dictionary to use. (I also HIGHLY recommend buying 501 Spanish Verbs. This is a MUST-HAVE book for anyone wanting to learn Spanish correctly)

This Spanish dictionary is amazing - I've used it for several semesters of college Spanish, as well as during a two month trip in Ecuador, and I can count on one hand the number of words that I've encountered that aren't in this dictionary. This dictionary also includes tons of usage information - common verbs like poder, quedar, and estar each receive more than a full column of coverage, most of which is sample phrases and sentences so that you can see exactly how a word is used in many different contexts. Slang/offensive words are marked as such, and when words are used only in certain regions, this information is also mentioned. Some good information on Spanish grammar is included; though it isn't terribly extensive, it is useful for figuring out important phrases and structures.This book's formatting is another one of its strengths. The variety of tasteful colors and styles separate this book from the dictionaries limited to black text.Overall, this dictionary is wonderful - if you're a Spanish student or speaker interested in a dictionary that is both comprehensive and easy to use, look no further!

I stood in a bookstore reference section and compared 4 different Spanish/English dictionaries for about 15 minutes before buying this one. It is easy to use, updated with current words, has very good information on what they call Language Building Supplements, such as how to do correspondence, using the telephone, translation tips, conjugating verbs, etc.. This dictionary would be good for a college freshman, senior, or someone like me who is just working on trying to learn the language.