For many years I stopped using paper dictionaries as I thought it was a lot faster to just use Google translate or similar. But then a lot of the things would get lost in translation. You can find thousands of examples of this on internet (like Chinglish, for example).
So little by little, and without forgetting about the cool tools available on the internet, I went back to using a paper dictionary and here are some of the awesome things I found:
- You can look up “words that start with…”
- It makes you spell: If you are great at spelling, you are keeping your skill up. If you struggle with spelling, this exercise improves your spelling IQ.
- The dictionary gives you examples from real life instead of adaptations of it. Natural language instead of artificial.
- It tells you the type of word you have searched for (such as noun, verb, preposition…), which takes me to the next reason:
- The metalanguage (language about language!) is consistent and possibly easier to grasp if you stick to one same dictionary (which you normally don’t do when you go online as you end up checking lots of them or even forums…)
- It tells you where the word comes from, which gives you the tool to guess about the meaning of other words you don’t know. For example, if you look at the Spanish word fin (end), the dictionary will tell you that it comes from Latin finis. And looks like finish! And now you can probably guess the meaning of words like finalidad, finable, finalista or finalizar, or at least you can guess they are related to something that finishes or has an ending.
- It helps you with the pronunciation of the word. Although you need to get used to the symbols, after a couple of months studying Spanish and using a dictionary, you’ll know all of them and you’ll be able to use this great tool.
- Paper dictionaries tell you when you can use it (colloquial, formal, vulgar, dialectic, ironic…)
- Unconscious learning: Unconsciously your brain will process other words while you’re looking for something else or just passing the pages. And unconsciously you will end up looking at the words that come before and after the one you’re actually looking at.
- Serendipity: Because looking for one word, you will find others that you might be interested in…
- …or words that you forgot you knew (but because you’ve seen them again, you’ll remember)
- If you are using a good one, you’re likely to find illustrations related to the culture and language you’re studying. Interesting ones.
- Because sometimes the internet just doesn’t work.
However I understand we can’t carry a paper dictionary everywhere we go. So here you have some good and free online ones:
My favourite, the Collins dictionary:
Or Linguee, which gives you the possibility to look for words or expressions, showing you the context they’re used in.
Reverso is similar to Linguee, but this one inlcudes informal language as it’s got subtitles, movie scripts, etc. It’s new, so you may find some weird translations but you can vote them and help build a better contextual dictionary.
Which ones do you use? Do you have any favourites or recommendations?
