Langenscheidt Standard Dictionary German

I bought this book after I decided to study abroad in Germany. I got it to replace my 1992 Langenscheidt German "Compact Dictionary". After 20 good years of use (both in a high school for quite some time and some several months abroad), my old book is finally going into retirement. Even with the grammar shift in 1996, most of the entries in my old book were still pretty accurate, and I loved the old entry system, but that rugged little thing needs to be put to rest.I was apprehensive at first with my new one. I'd never looked inside the version meant for the native English speaker before, and while one might not think there's a big difference, I found some important distinctions:1. The ones they sell in Germany, while containing identical dictionary sections, have conversions for all sorts of measurements *from* metric *to* U.S. Standard, whereas the English version has the opposite. Especially important for people who like to bake and people who aren't familiar with how long a kilometer (or a meter, for that matter) is.2. The German version contains a list of all of the irregular English verbs, whereas the English version contains a list of all the irregular German verbs3. The "how to use this book" section in the German version is naturally in German. While it isn't rocket science, I like knowing all the nuances of the dictionary because it contains some helpful grammar info that might go unnoticed if the "how to use" section is skipped.4. The English version also contains various tidbits like basic mathematical phrases (eg how to say 1/3 or 6 x 7) and German counting terms (1st, 2nd, so on)5. The German version in most bookstores I've been to (in Germany) and on Amazon.de cost around 25 Euros. That's roughly twice as expensive as the English version if you ship it for free.My apprehensions over the English version were misplaced, however, and I was overjoyed to find that those wise and reasonable people at Langenscheidt had largely stuck with their very functional format from the 90s. This bad boy contains just about every word you're going to need, provided you're not a chemical engineer or biologist lecturing in German. It has the plural and genitive forms for most of the nouns, classifies the verbs in a pretty useful manner, and contains a pretty intuitive layout. It also has a nice phonetic chart comparing the sounds between the two languages, and has pronunciation breakdowns for the "harder-to-say" words. I wasn't keen on the blue Headwords (in the old version they were just black and bold), but that's personal preference. The best things in this little monster, however, are the example sentences contained in some of the definitions. While you're not going to learn German grammar from this book, the examples are simple, relevant, and most importantly, accurate.My only complaints are that this edition of the book is about twice as large as my old pocket dictionary, with only a couple thousand more entries. Same thickness, but basically doubled in page size. The upshot here is that it is much easier to read, but unless you're packing it around in your backpack, this isn't a pocket dictionary anymore.In short: If you're only going to be passing through, this book might be a bit much for you. It's big, powerful, and means business! If you're going to be spending an extended period of time in Germany, or if you're studying anything from beginner to advanced German, you won't find a better book. Especially for the price. Under $15 for this thing is absolutely insane.

I got about 60 pages in before I realized this isn't an actual novel, it is written more in the style of one of the great classics like the odyssey than any modern convention. That being said it well written and structured. Flows in a nice alphabetical sequence from start to finish. However, if you like me were looking for a German adventure novel I suggest you look elsewhere. This book really gets into the weeds of what each word means and what it translates into in English. At times the sentences seemed jumbled and nonsensical. The first sentence of the chapter German-English reads: A, a A à @ Aal Aalglatt Aargau Aas. I took this to be a stark observation of how far we in modern society are removed from the harsh reality of the world. The juxtaposition of the @ symbol to the word for carcass is just one example of the delicate craftsmanship this intriguing book builds at with each sentence. The structure of this books leaves so much room for interpretation you might be best served using this book purely as reference for translating German words into English and vice versa; however, if you are brave I hope you can take the time to tackle this monstrous and wonderful exploration into the human condition.

After using Harper-Collins and some other German-English dictionaries for German language courses, Langensheidt is a breath of fresh air. The operative terms being defined are in a hot blue color, so they jump of the page at you, and the variants of the words within the entry for a root word are also highlighted. I can't tell you how much time this has saved me. As anyone who has studied a bit of German knows, the words we encounter are often not the basic form of the words that we are actually looking for, so, without such highlighting, looking things up in other dictionaries becomes even more time consuming. Each entry has all of the information you could want, or, at least, that I have needed in my current intensive German reading course. Such banal information, such as articles, pronunciation keys, and plurals, is included; but one of the nice things about this dictionary is that separable prefixes are indicated, which many dictionaries, for whatever reason, do not include. Entries, where appropriate, contain common idiomatic expressions, which are essential to reading German. There are also some helpful indices containing information regarding such things as weak verbs.Among the most popular fairly portable German-English dictionaries I have found, this one has the biggest bang for buck. The only kind of dictionary that is going to be significantly better than this one will probably be an unabridged German-English dictionary, and even many of those don't contain information like the separability of prefixes. I think this one covers just about all the bases, insofar as my experience is concerned.

My dictionary came with 49 pages missing (goes from page 144 to page 193). Because of that, I dock off a star. However, Amazon customer support was great, and they're sending me a new one even though I noticed the missing pages after my refund window expired. With that said, the dictionary is amazing. It gives thorough explanations and examples of every single word. A must-have for anyone learning German or English.