Harper Collins Robert French College Dictionary

By HarperCollins

The college edition of HarperCollins Robert French Dictionary offers comprehensive covergae of both French and English, providing up-to-date coverage of buisness, political, and technical terms. The... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060956909
• ISBN13: 9780060956905
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: New York: St. Martin's (1996).
• Weight: 3.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.8" x 6.3" x 2.8"

Customer Reviews

Must Have for Students of French

This is the best most comprehensive dictionary for anyone studying French. It provides detailed explanations on words, verbs, usage and expressions. It is a must have and worth the price.

WELL-STRUCTURED, VERY GOOD

"Harper Collins Robert French College Dictionary" has a rather long name, but that is the only big blame I have for it. It quickly opens the door at the request of any French enthusiast.This well-compiled lexicon covers almost all the contemporary words that French natives use in daily conversations. It has a good structure, and its double-spaced outlay makes it easy to locate words. However, intending (American) buyers should bear in mind that this edition paid more attention to the Queen's English than it did to the American one.

Great Format

Nicely laid out, this dictionary is complete and well-assembled. The middle section that helps with cultural differences is especially nice. My biggest complaint is that they use the new pronunciation alphabet, wherein different letters have a specific sound, as opposed to the tradition lines and curves above vowels that so many of us have learned in grammar school.

My one and only companion

As an AP French teacher, I research a great deal before I ask my students to buy a dictionary. My bible from my years as a college French major to even now as a teacher has been the unabridged Collins-Robert French English dictionary, with its nuanced entries--entries which actually teach the reader how to differentiate between different usages of words. (For it is in only this that a foreign language dictionary can truly have any value...)This abridged version still tackles the nuance problem to an admirable degree, while maintaining an affordable, portable sensibility. It's for this reason that I ask my students to buy it.The Larousse is still good--my colleague swears by it, and "googol" is in the unabridged version while it's not in the Collins-Robert... but aesthetically, intuitively, and--most especially--in terms of the phrases you really want to translate, the Collins-Robert covers more interesting ground. Buy this book, and if you have a Palm Pilot or equivalent with enough memory, buy the Palm version too.