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Title: SerboCroatian-English Dictionary by Morton Benson, Biljana Sljivic-Simsic ISBN: 0-521-38495-8 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 30 March, 1990 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $100.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.25 (4 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Still the best Serbo-Croatian dictionary out there, bar none
Comment: For a beautiful language that is out of the way for most English speakers, Morton Benson produced a classic I wish everyone else in foreign langage dictionary publishing would emulate. (I've been dreaming since 1993 of a Benson-quality analogue for Romanian...)
Are there flaws? Sure. The "see the other entry" habit a previous reviewer mentioned is time-consuming and often requires a great deal of thought when deciphering the meaning of, say, similar verbs with the same roots but different prefixes. Also, I would've liked to see more explicit definitions of verbs frequently converted to their gerund form, instead of having to arrive at my best "guess-timation" in some not-so-easy situations.
Most other gripes remain the exclusive business of literary experts. (Particularly gripes about the real or imagined separation of Serbo-Croatian into separate, non-hyphenated languages; most of these arguments have more to do with nationalist projects on angry tangents than logic or linguistic history.)
For serious non-native students of the language like myself (a political scientist), I have yet to see anything remotely close to the Benson, let alone better, although there may well be a few out of print rarities in used book shops in the former Yugoslavia.
Very few dictionaries of any non-major foreign language go into the grammatical, let alone regional, detail that Benson does in the entries themselves (particularly past tenses and participles) and a wide range of expressions (even though it is not intended to be a real phraseological dictionary). He also includes an excellent, quick and dirty reference of cases and grammatical endings for nouns and adjectives in the back (nice, you can leave your textbook photocopies at home). The preface contains several rules concerning verb behavior that I have found immensely helpful.
This Benson is frequently found as part of a 2 volume set, one volume on Serbo-Croatian to English, the other volume as the reverse (English to Serbo-Croatian). They're rather large in size and pricey, but *worth every penny* if you have any sustained need to understand Serbo-Croatian beyond a short tourist trip. My copy is rather battered and overly thumbed, but rates as important a place as my underwear in my backpack on every trip to Serbia. (I even bought a backup copy in Belgrade--much cheaper, but also on cheaper paper). Look around for deals offering both volumes together--I think I got mine in 1995 directly off Cambridge UP for not much more than the current price for one (90 dollars).
There is also an earlier version of the Benson produced in the early 1980s, I believe--smaller, going from S-C to English to back, in one much more portable volume, but it does not have the grammatical details so vital to the bigger Benson, and it certainly falls far shorter on the number of words. Every teacher I know recommends the "big Benson" for the serious student.
I just wish more publishers served language students with the quality of the Cambridge UP Benson, instead of foisting cheap, frustratingly useless junk on starved niche markets, like Hippocrene routinely does. You can *always* find better than a Hippocrene in the new or used book shops of the target country, and if you're going to visit anyway...buy it there.
Rating: 5
Summary: Best, most comprehensive dictionary available
Comment: As the other reviewers have pointed out, there are flaws with this dictionary, but there are flaws with any dictionary that is printed. Especially in today's world, we cannot expect a "Serbo-Croatian" dictionary to please everybody. Most people will not agree that Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian are the same language. It is impossible to list every single difference between the different dialects of former Yugoslavia. I have studied and taught this language for over ten years, and there are too many differences to be pointed out in a dictionary. You must understand that this dictionary was written when there was a "knjizevni" serbo-croatian language. That is the language that this dictionary is based on. If you cannot live with that, then you need to find a different dictionary, or better yet, sit down and create your own.
Rating: 2
Summary: Is this the best we can do?
Comment: For the Belgrade ("Serbian") variety of the language, this is the best dictionary available. Alas, that's not saying much. Benson seems to rely on literature more than the living spoken language, which may explain the many outdated and archaic forms that are presented without being so identified. Just one example: frka is glossed as "snort, snorting of a horse." But in modern Serbian, that would be frkanje, which Benson does not list. (The modern meaning of frka is "ruckus, fuss, ado"; again, omitted by Benson.)
But the one failing of this dictionary that I find unforgiveable is the abuse of the word "see." It is so common to look up a word in Benson only to find nothing but an instruction to "see" some other entry that we have a joke among Serbian translators: Benson induces "see"-sickness. And the worst of it is, often the entry you're told to "see" is an inadequate synonym for the word you need.
If Benson has a strength, it is in its meticulous attention to accentuation. You won't find that in any other English dictionary.
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Title: English-SerboCroatian Dictionary by Morton Benson ISBN: 0521384966 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 30 March, 1990 List Price(USD): $100.00 |
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