Berlitz Danish-English Dictionary

Rating:
Summary: IPA (Not) For Dummies
Review: As other reviewers have pointed out, this little book doesn't have much competition. This is a reasonably useful little dictionary, and is worth its retail price.

Complaint: The English-Danish section gives the reader a pronunciation guide using the IPA. Thus, a Danish speaker has a reasonable idea of exactly how to pronounce the English words. The Danish-English section gives the reader what purports to be a "phonetic transcription," but instead of using the clear and unambiguous IPA, the editors have chosen to saddle the English speaker with a silly, dumbed-down homebrew of an approximate guide to pronunciation. This is NOT a "phonetic transcription," this is a rough guide. Danish orthography, like English orthography, can be tricky and misleading sometimes. Apparently, the editors feel that the big, scary IPA is too much for us anglophones to wrap our pretty little heads around, and that we'll be happy with only a vague idea how to pronounce those dreadful Danish words. "Overraskelse" (surprise)? Just say "o(oo)-o-rahss-gerl-ser." I suppose that's close enough to make me understood, but a "phonetic transcription?" Nope.

Still, this dictionary is better than no dictionary at all, and serves its purpose well enough. The fact that the IPA is OK for Danes but not for anglophones is insulting and annoying, but (oh, well) this is a Berlitz product, after all.

Rating:
Summary: A necessary "hard-to-find" item for the Danish Traveler!
Review: Berlitz is the best, and was I ever happy to FINALLY find this book!! It's nicely compact and has everything you could possibly want in a foreign language dictionary. Very well laid out,with great pronunciation guides as well, especially helpful with such a difficult language as Danish. An added plus in the very back are numbers, time, days of the week & conversion tables. THE BEST!!

Rating:
Summary: cute little dictionary, but only for beginners
Review: Good things about this dictionary: Pocket-sized, great for travel. Quick lookup, because just gives you the basic definitions you would need as a BEGINNER.

Bad things: Couldn't find a few words I needed (such as "boyfriend" and more slang-ish types of words). Only gives one or two possible translations for words that would have at least 10 definitions in an English dictionary. (Example: for the word "miss" they give you only two translations, for using with e.g. "Miss Andersen" and "I miss you," but not for "I missed the bus" etc.)

Get this dictionary only if you're a complete beginner, in which case it'll be very handy.

Rating:
Summary: The Best of a Slim Selection, but Only for Starting Out
Review: I bought this dictionary prior to heading to Copenhagen for a month to work. It was helpful as a pocket reference for store-front signs and very basic reading vocabulary, but the biggest thing to recommend it, apart from the low price, is the fact that there aren't many alternatives here. With Berlitz, you get 12,000 terms in each language, which will get you around town but not help much with words that have even the slightest disciplinary specificity or currency to them (the word 'e-mail,' for example, is absent, as are many other words that have seeped into everyday use, and this might be due to this dictionary's not having been updated since 1994).

The good things about this dictionary are its pronunciation guide (this is actually much more than a good thing, as even more thorough dictionaries I saw in Denmark didn't have this) and its handy reference pages, which give you the quick run-down on how to tell time, for example, or read a menu. In this way, it feels like a guide for beginning learners of the language or tourists. There's nothing wrong with that, but Berlitz ought to indicate this on the cover.

It's a good dictionary for the price, and it's perfectly suited to beginning learners of Danish and for short travels. If you plan on using it as a reference guide for reading or for more advanced Danish, you'd do well to look further.

Rating:
Summary: cute little dictionary, but only for beginners
Review: I was surprised that this itty-bitty dictionary had so many words in it! Also, it has a small grammar section and a few helpful quick-reference sections (such as ordering in a restaurant).

This dictionary is helpful for when I'm chatting online with my Danish friends and need to look up a word that isn't in my vocabulary yet. Eventually though, I plan to purchase those big red Engelsk-Dansk/Danish-English dictionaries! That will have to wait until after I am out of college though.

Rating:
Summary: Small but functional
Review: I was surprised that this itty-bitty dictionary had so many words in it! Also, it has a small grammar section and a few helpful quick-reference sections (such as ordering in a restaurant).

This dictionary is helpful for when I'm chatting online with my Danish friends and need to look up a word that isn't in my vocabulary yet. Eventually though, I plan to purchase those big red Engelsk-Dansk/Danish-English dictionaries! That will have to wait until after I am out of college though.

Rating:
Summary: This Dictionary Is Wonderful
Review: The Berlitz Danish-English Dictionary is a great tool to have. It is easy to use, with its accurate easy to find information. I would recomend it to anyone.