HarperCollins Russian Concise Dictionary, 2e

by Harpercollins

Release Date: 01 July, 2000

Edition: Paperback

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The only one we use.

My wife is Russian. I had searched for a good dictionary and was appalled by the translation of a few test words. The deciding factor in getting this one was the word "funny". Oxford and the others had it as "to make fun of". This dictionary had that and the funny that means "what makes you laugh". When ever we need to find what an English word means in Russian, or my wife does not know what the English word is for her Russian word, we go to this book. A great buy.

Ochen kharasho! (Very good!)

Arguably the best, most modern and complete Russian dictionary available. It's pretty thick, so fitting it in a brief case or backpack might take some effort.

There is one potential problem: In the Russian section, the individual letter sub-sections has a header in big ITALICIZED upper- and lower-case letters that look nothing like their non-italicized equivalents. Take, for example, the Russian letter T. A lower-case T does not look like our "t," but rather like the original "T," only smaller. But the ITALICIZED lower-case T doesn't look like "T," but rather like "m." I hope I'm not confusing you; it's just something to look out for.

If you have a chance to browse through a dictionary before buying it, please do so. Make sure it contains all the vocabulary you'll need, and that the word entries are presented as concisely and attractively as you wish. That said, I feel this Russian dictionary lives up to those requirements.