"Official" Dictionaries?
fra BeardedBloke,2014 5 30
Meldinger: 42
Språk: English
morfran (Å vise profilen) 2014 6 28 22:14:10
Christa627:But I can't understand it: it's in some language with Cyrillic letters; Russian I'm guessing? I only know a few words in Russian, so this doesn't help me much!Gah? Oh yeah. I thought it was just the definitions of the words that were in Russian, forgetting that the abbreviations for other languages are, too. Sorry about that.
Bernadox (Å vise profilen) 2014 6 29 04:40:06
Gonzo:The best esperanto to english dictionary is the 1967 "Esperanto-English Dictionary" by Montagu C. Butler.Right! It'is here as html-file since June 2014.
Gonzo:I agree that Wells' dictionary is mostly a wordlist. It doesn't give any usage examples or give any clue as to what the nuanced senses of a word might be.Right! It'is "Unreliable, misleading, dilettantish, insignificant ...". Use only with care.
Gonzo:Going the other way, English to Esperanto, the dictionary by Peter Benson is the best as far as I know.Right! Benson in 2010 agreed to put it on the web. Seemingly they (who?) are still working about it.
Unfortunately English is decades behind when it comes to Esperanto dictionaries. So far, there is nothing comparable to those in Chinese, Czech (the largest one!), Croatian, German, Hungarian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian etc. See this blog for discussion.
The only reliable edition of the "Vortaro Oficiala" (all ~5000 "official" elements) is here as a pdf. The "Akademia Vortaro" of the "Academy" is misleading.
SWDusono (Å vise profilen) 2014 6 30 18:46:22
I have also had some success with Wikipedia and Wiktionary. I'm really new to Esperanto, so I can't speak with much authority about how well this works with Esperanto. What are your thoughts?
robbkvasnak (Å vise profilen) 2014 6 30 20:15:45
What does "... still working about it" mean? Is someone trying to raise funds for such a project or are they/is he or she already working on it? Who? Is there an organization trying to put together an English-Esperanto (and maybe Esperanto-English) dictionary? Which English?
I too use Wikipedia and Google in general often to look for scads of words used in the language people speak here in Florida. Sometimes I feel that I have to use descriptions - but then, I suppose that I would also have to add a description when writing for people outside my region anyway. I have scribbled in my Wells dictionary and added comments all over the place. I mostly need US-English to Esperanto, rarely the other way around.
erinja (Å vise profilen) 2014 6 30 20:21:09
orthohawk (Å vise profilen) 2014 6 30 23:45:02
erinja:Wow. Lots of hating on John Wells in this thread. A dilettante? Harsh.reminds me of the time Chris Culver called Don Harlow a "provincial Esperantist".........
RiotNrrd (Å vise profilen) 2014 7 1 02:00:38
erinja:Wow. Lots of hating on John Wells in this thread.I know you like the Wells dictionary, erinja, so a few years ago I picked up a copy of the original edition when I ran across one.
Honestly, I don't like it either. I never use it unless I'm just going for breadth in my sources. I'm sorry, because I know you do like it, but I personally wouldn't recommend it, really to anyone, unless they just couldn't get anything else. I do want to underscore that that is just MY opinion, and that there are plenty of people who do like it, and I'm not going to argue with them. If it works for someone, then it works, and more power to them. It just doesn't work for me, and it gets little to no use by me.
So, I kind of get the hating on the book. I wish I didn't, to be honest, but there it is.
(As for hating on the man himself - OK, that I don't get. He seems like a decent enough guy, and he's certainly been around Esperanto long enough that 'dilettante' sounds kind of silly.)
Kirilo81 (Å vise profilen) 2014 7 1 07:22:51
But as an esperantologist he just isn't up to the task, as he seemingly doesn't bother to check even the basic literature (see this example with links to other ones).
erinja (Å vise profilen) 2014 7 1 14:13:02
Also, I'm waiting for someone to tell me which two-way dictionary (Eo-En, En-Eo) dictionary is better than Wells. Most beginners don't want to shell out for two separate books, or keep two separate books in their bag when they walk around. If someone points to me a better two-way dictionary, I'd gladly start recommending that one instead. But recommending to people that they buy two different one-way dictionaries, one of which is long out of print - this isn't going to do it for most beginners, who just want a general-purpose paper dictionary.
bartlett22183 (Å vise profilen) 2014 7 1 18:17:18
RiotNrrd:In the early 1970s, when I knew little about Esperanto except the name and the vague notion of a constructed international auxiliary language, I was browsing a used bookstore. I came across a hardbound copy, unmarked and like new, of the J. C. Wells "Esperanto - English Dictionary" in the Teach Yourself Books series for USD$2,95. Small, convenient size. I still have it. About that time, surprisingly, there was an Universala Kongreso in the medium sized usona city in which I was then living, and numerous books were donated to the public library and to the state university library in the city.erinja:Wow. Lots of hating on John Wells in this thread.I know you like the Wells dictionary, erinja, so a few years ago I picked up a copy of the original edition when I ran across one.
Honestly, I don't like it either. ...
I went to the university library and made copious notes in the blank pages of my copy of the Wells dictionary. Whatever others here may think of it, that dictionary, with its prefatory matter, was my real introduction to Esperanto, although I had first learned of the language at all in 1961. (I now have a hardbound copy of the recent edition of the Wells dictionary published by Mondial, but I sometimes still use the earlier edition simply because of its small, handy size.)