Concise Dictionary of 26 Languages

by Peter M. Bergman

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• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0451159462
• ISBN13: 9780451159465
• Release Date: February 1968
• Publisher: Signet Book
• Length: 1 Pages

Customer Reviews

Very handy for language comparison

The first part of the book lists translations of 1000 common terms, each into 26 languages. This section is very readable, given that each entry takes exactly a quarter page, the languages appear in the same order, and only a single form is given in each language. All translations in this section are Romanized (i.e. in an English alphabet, but including accents of several languages, as well as indicators of stressed syllables in a couple.)In the second part of the book, single-language lists are given alphabetically in the alphabet of the language, and indexed by the number used in part one. Even as early as for my 1968 edition, they took the time to work with several international fonts - such as for Russian, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Japanese, although some language-specific spellings are incorrect.Most of the 1000 entries are nouns, although they do have some other words such as verbs and adjectives. One way this book hides grammatical differences is to avoid words requiring multiple translations in language-specific ways (examples of omitted words that are certainly among the 1000 most common: you, I, how, what.)Given that such ommitted words are necessary to use a language, this should not be regarded as a dictionary or translation guide. But it does give a very good way to gain quick insight into how languages are related. In the small subset of languages I know, the single best translation appears to be chosen in over 90% of cases.