Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #98222 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-14
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 687 pages

Customer Reviews

I'm keeping it!
I'm writing a review of this book because I found it hard to get any basic information about it before I bought it. Though one reviewer did say that it's written more for Swedes leaning English than the reverse.

It's supposedly part of the Collins Gem series; but I find it not nearly as good as, say, the Collins Gem French or Italian dictionaries. For one thing, the print is far larger, so less than half the number of words can be fitted in. (I'm going by the numbers claimed on the covers). The second reason relates more to English speakers interested in the Swedish language. I only discovered when I'd bought it that, although the nouns are labelled with their genders and plural forms, we're given no help with the verbs except the word `verb'.

Now, though Swedish doesn't have a lot of difficult grammar, it does have four classes of verbs, all of which behave differently, not counting irregular verbs. You can't even use a Swedish noun or verb in a sentence without knowing what sort of noun or verb it is.

Naturally in a pocket dictionary, you have to keep things short. Some reviewers complained that this dictionary gives the pronuncation of English words, but none for Swedish. Well, the truth is you can derive the pronunciation of most (not all) Swedish words by a few basic rules. But leaving out verb types? The dictionary would actually be shorter if something like `v 1' or `v 2' were written after every verb instead of `verb', given in full.

There are about 50% more entries on the English-Swedish side than the other. The book includes some very, very short grammars of English and Swedish, some rules (not nearly enough) for how to pronounce Swedish, and a mini-phrasebook for Swedes. None of this is complete enough to be of much use.

OK then, why won't I be sending the book back or selling it on e-bay? Because in fact, it's the best available in its class. It has a far larger vocabulary than the Berlitz pocket dictionary, which is aimed at casual travellers. It's far smaller and lighter than the Prisma Dictionary, which is the standard reference work. I'm going to Sweden, and I need one about this size. So it looks as if I'll be copying in verb-classes by hand for the next week or two.

Norstedts English/ Swedish Pocket Dictionary
Ok it is small and you can carry it around.. of course it does not have in all the words in both Swedish and English. It does have hints about the grammar, pronunciation, please note hints just to help you get by, to give you an insight. On the whole i found this little dictionary very helpful and easy to use. One of the better ones out there.