The Concise Oxford Russian Dictionary

Rating:
Summary: not as good as I hoped...
Review: I have Oxford dictionaries in other languages and never found any problems with them. My Russian is not very good and perhaps that's why I notice some problems with this dictionary. It has some odd omissions. For instance, I tried looking up the Russian word for 'children' under the entry 'child' in the English-Russian section. The entry does NOT say that 'children' is the plural of child, in fact it doesn't mention the word 'children' anywhere. Nor does the entry include the Russian word for 'children.' And 'children' is not listed anywhere else in the English-Russian section. So some hapless Russian speaker using this dictionary would not learn that 'children' is the plural of 'child,' and would not be able to look up the word 'children' at all. Conversely, an English speaker would also not find the Russian word for 'children' by looking in the English-Russian section. Granted this may be an isolated example, but it does suggest that there may be some editing problems.

I also disliked the explanations in the front about the construction and meaning of dictionary entries. The explanations are a little too terse for those of us not well versed in Russian grammar. It would be nice to have at least a few examples written out in full. And as far as I could make out, a lot of the information about the Russian entries actually appeared under the discussion of English entries.

It would be nice to have a few more notes about pronunciation. As is, you would think that 'yevo' in Russian was pronounced 'yego' (as it is spelled) if all you had to go on was the information in the dictionary. Nor will you find information about consonants that aren't pronounced.

Other than that, the dictionary is nicely produced and well printed. It appears up-to-date, with lots of internet information. I am not able to make any intelligent comparisons of this dictionary with other Russian-English dictionaries. Although this seems to have a few shortcomings, it may well be a good choice for many readers.

One additional note: although another reviewer mentions conjugation tables, my copy of this dictionary has no grammatical tables of any kind (although they would have been useful).

Rating:
Summary: A good reference dictionary
Review: This is an excellent dictionary for students of Russian. It is well-organized, attractive, and I have to not find a word I need. However, it is pretty big. I wouldn't advise buying it as a travel ditionary.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Very comprehensive and an ideal companion to your Russian studies. It appears to have all I need in terms of vocabulary at a beginners/intermediate level, although it could contain more contemporary slang (important I feel when learning a language you will be exposed to on a daily basis)

It is though the heaviest book I carry around daily and sometimes I could wish for a lighter dictionary!