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[blue-sky-day.livejournal.com]

What dictionary/dictionaries do you use?
What do you like about them?

Comments

[slovami.livejournal.com]

I use Katzner: http://www.amazon.com/English-Russian-Russian-English-Dictionary-Kenneth-Katzner/dp/0471017078/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220707979&sr=8-1

It seems to be pretty well-respected in American universities. I like that it's based on American English, not British. For its size (a bit bigger than the paperback Oxford), it's pretty thorough. I can only think of one instance I've encountered where a word I really thought should be included wasn't there. (The word, if you wanted to know, was пёс.) It also has some (but not all, of course) set phrases and colloquialisms. The descriptions of how to use verbs and prepositions, while not as thorough as they would be in a grammar book, are pretty useful.

I've also used the paperback Oxford, which isn't bad, either. I really prefer the Katzner, though.

[53miles.livejournal.com]

I like Langenscheidt dictionaries. I had both Russian-English, English-Russian, and German-Russian, Russian-German. The English one had American English, too

[kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com]

I have both the Katzner and the hardback Oxford. I use the Katzner the most just because it's a bit smaller and less painful to carry around.

It's a good, everyday dictionary. As long as you aren't coming across a lot of specialized or obscure vocab, it will serve you well. The same is true of the hardback Oxford, though--and it has the added bonus of being fantastic for killing small vermin.

[pigmeich.livejournal.com]

Paper dics is taboo words! :)

[drivebyluna.livejournal.com]

I use the paperback Oxford.

[archaicos.livejournal.com]

Lingvo (not online). Apart from being a very good dictionary for English and Russian it can show noun and adjective case inflections and verb conjugations (beware there're still mistakes lurking around in Spanish and I naturally don't know how good it is with Russian words), it can find the base form of a word by a given inflection, there's a pretty good search that even supports basic wildcards (* for any number of any symbols and ? for any single symbol) so if you wonder what words contain a certain letter pattern you can find such words. It marks the stress in Russian words with red, which should be very useful for the learners of Russian. Of course, there're many more things to have a good tool for, and not all of them belong to a dictionary.

[cassandraclue.livejournal.com]

I use hardback oxford as my paper dictionary, which as mentioned above can also serve other functions. It's very hardy. I also use lingvo (disc)--no one has mentioned it yet, but the autotranslation when you point at a word is very useful and time-saving. I use multitran.ru when i need something right away. It also has conjugations/declensions.

Katzner is a good beginning learner's dictionary, but it's really expensive for a paperback. For academic work it certainly is insufficient. Those I studied with in Russia who only had Katzner had to buy another dictionary.

[pigmeich.livejournal.com]

I'm native Russian speaker, so I mostly use dictionaries on English. It's ABBYY Lingvo, online Merriam-Webster, Wikipedia.org and uber colloquial reference Google.

Yes, I use Lingvo most of all, the cause is it very handy: just press the key command and recive a card about. In later version, glossaries have appeared.

Wikipedia is very good and handy source for finding definition and explanatory. Also there are interwikies that links features on one subject, so Wikipedia may serve as dictionary. And all I need is type "w term" and will be redirected to the right page.

And google is brute tool for highly quality and heavy terms no one beforehand dictionaries can't find.