Standard English-SerboCroatian, SerboCroatian-English Dictionary : A Dictionary of Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian Standards

by Morton Benson

Release Date: 13 July, 1998

Edition: Paperback

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An addendum

Benson is a mixed blessing. Yet, better dictionaries will not be written as long as we live in tomato sized (we have no bananas) "states" and believe that Britney Spears equals culture...
How does the reader below substantiate his claim except by
ad hominem attacks?
Benson should have included more Turkicisms, yes...but how are Mesa Selimovic and Musa Cazim-Catic writing a language different from Andric's?
Well, let's grant our friend a moment of sheer heroism.
Hereby I declare my full willingness to challenge the reader below or anyone else preaching scientific (sic) objectivity while kneeling at the altar of nationalism.
I will leave my dictionaries and decorations at home, since reading a language involves time, love and labor; hence, more than professional envy and hatred.
Oh yes -- may my opponent pick a language and a literature most congenial to him, be it Turkish (including Ottoman), Persian or
Arabic. Or should it be Romance languages, since he is a Parisien by choice (let me guess...his heart's utmost desire is the EU, nothing more southern than Italy)?
I'll be generous and exlude Chinese, Latin and Nahuatl (aka Aztec for those of short memory).

Do not buy ever

Apparently, some of interpreters and translators have been commenting on the usage of Benson and it surprises me that they would say anything positive about this dictionary since, for as long as I remember, this community has been making fun of it. Benson is a bad dictionary maker. Period. If you use dictionary professionaly, and if it is unable to translate the word/phraze or a concept, it's absolutely useless, and Benson is full of such instances. I used to be shocked by some translations and used to wonder who ever let him write a dictionary.

The other source of misunderstanding between quality of a dictionary and some "I speak dozen languages" state of mind, is the phenomenon of a usage of dictionary itself: when you learn language, you buy a language learning book, dictionary as such is a reference book and it cannot help you if you're learning language, that is what immersion course does. You do not need dictionary if your level of language is beginner's, intermediate or upper intermediate, you have all vocabulary that you need in the book itself, so don't waste your money on dictionaries.

Since I am obviously not going to get involved with "Jugoostalgicari" who see attacks to this dictionary as an attack to their "nostalgija" I will however point out that one should first decide what language to study between Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian since they are not the same language. Sadly, there is no good Bosnian dictionary and one does have to have good dictionary of "turcisms" if one wants to explore that language, as at certain point communication either stops or becomes unnatural. As far as Croatian is concerned Bujas is absolutely the best dictionary ever (am translator for Bosnian/English/French/Arabic, so trust me on this), and I really wouldn't know what to recommend for Serbian since they are not so keen on advertising this stuff.