DICTIONARIES

Дата добавления: 2014-10-24 | Просмотров: 1548

We all know the saying of a wise man who lived more than two thousand years ago: «Of making many books there is no end». If he had been living today, he might have said the same of dictionaries, for several new ones appear every year. They are needed for various purpos­es. Even in our own language we often find it necessary to look up a word, sometimes for the spelling, sometimes for the pronunciation, or it may be for the meaning or origin of the word.

In the twentieth century, with the remarkable increase in scientific and other knowledge, special dictionaries have to be made for special groups of words — commer­cial, technical, psychological, medical etc. There are some very large dictionaries which are supposed to con­tain all the words of the language, but they are not con­venient to use. They are too heavy and take too much room. If you are studying one subject, it is much better to have a dictionary which is no bigger than an ordinary book.

Students of a foreign language need a dictionary which ontains all the words in common use in their own lan-uage and the one they are trying to learn, that is, the ords they are likely to hear in conversation, and on the adio, and those they will meet in the books and newspa-iers they read. Suchdictionaries usually give the mean-ng of aword by translatingit; and, sometimes, butnot always, they give translations of phrases and structures. Dictionaries of this kind are useful to translators, but less useful to earnest students of language than diction­aries which give meanings and explanations and exam­ples in the foreign language itself.