Larousse Advanced Dictionary, Grand Dictionnaire French/English English/French (French Edition) Review

Larousse Advanced Dictionary, Grand Dictionnaire French/English English/French (French Edition)
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Larousse Advanced Dictionary, Grand Dictionnaire French/English English/French (French Edition) ReviewLearning languages in a classroom is hard work. Just think how many problems you had grinding through diagramming English sentences in the 8th grade, and, if you are like me, English is your primary language. Now envision yourself in college, faced with two years of French, German, Russian, or Spanish. You spend, at most, five to six hours per week going over phonetics, grammar, vocabulary, and idioms of a language at lightening speed, without any means of significant outside reinforcement. What is worse, after one year of dipping your toe into the swamp that is a foreign language, the second year instructors expect you to speak, write, and read that language. Like most people, I started out studying French with a lot of vigor, flipping through flashcards faster than a gambler drops quarters in a slot machine. By the time I got to the second year, my early efforts rarely paid off: flashcards and random reading did help me to navigate written French fairly well, but speaking and listening to the language was still an excruciating task.
Unless you are majoring in a foreign language or have the means to live in a foreign country for at least six months, it is best to accept the fact that you will not speak a foreign language. What you can focus on is learning to read that language because it is much easier to recognize words on a written page than it is to pluck them from your brain in the course of a conversation. This is where a great dictionary comes into the picture. Not only will an excellent lexicon help get you through those daunting two years, it will also help you impress people when you read Baudelaire in the original. Certainly, you can be a cheapskate and pick up a five-dollar piece of crud that will get you through an introductory class. If you are like me, however, and love to use a sledgehammer when a tack hammer will do the job, welcome to the LaRousse Grand Dictionnaire. Sure, it is pricey, and you have a better chance of fitting a corpse in your backpack then this hernia inducing book, but if you want to actually use the scraps of French you learned in class (and even improve your reading skills) this is the dictionary for you.
I love this dictionary! First off, there are some great color maps of the world in here, with every place name clearly marked in French. Then it takes countries and breaks them down into "administrative districts" (read: states) and gives you those in French as well. But that's not all! Then we get maps of "patrimoine," or national heritage. Where the heck is "Mur d'Hadrien," you ask? Why, it is Hadrian's Wall, located in England! And as we all know, the Romans built Hadrian's Wall to keep obnoxious French waiters out of the empire. LaRousse even has a map of gay old Paris included, in case you want to see where all those protestors are marching. Seriously though-this dictionary has some great stuff between its covers.
Since this is an advanced dictionary, you will find many words that cruddy little paperback dictionaries do not include. Even better, after the phonetics and definition comes many helpful phrases that word appears in. A great example is the verb savoir, meaning "to know or to be aware of." What follows is an entire page of possible uses of savoir, such as "Je sais un moyen d'y parvenir," which translates as "I know a way to do it." The entries for common French words, such as etre, avoir, and faire, are just as comprehensive.
Also included is a table of 116 conjugated French verbs, which isn't too bad, although that number falls far short of what you would need to really read the language. As an added bonus, apparently for complete incompetents, is a list of irregular English verbs. Yep, this is a great dictionary.
I cracked a few jokes in this review about the French, but this really is a great addition to your library. This "Grand Dictionnaire" will speed you on the way to reading the language of a culture that produced some of the greatest literature, art, and cuisine in the history of the world. This dictionary will not only help you translate the words in a sentence, but also helps you achieve insight into what you are reading. There is no greater joy than getting the emotion behind the words ("Hey, not only do I know what that means, but the author is being sarcastic!"). LaRousse is the way to go.Larousse Advanced Dictionary, Grand Dictionnaire French/English English/French (French Edition) OverviewThis new, top-of-the line Advanced Dictionary has been specially developed to become the dictionary of first resort for students, teachers, and serious general users, offering detailed and up-to-date coverage of both languages, including Belgian, Canadian, and Swiss French, and British, Australian, South African and American English.Distinctive panel entries and highlights have been added along with two thousand new words and meanings from everyday life, the Internet, and technology. A crisp, easy-to-read layout brings all these great features together in one user-friendly volume.Special Feaures:Over 220,000 references and 400,000 translations. Panel entries on French culture. Frequently used phrases are highlighted at foot of page. Communications guide covers resumes, cover letters, applications, answering ads, making reservations.Cultural Guide includes international French and English variant spellings.

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