The Oxford Russian Dictionary: Russian-English - English-Russian (English and Russian Edition)

It is hard to review a dictionary. I cannot verify all 45,000 entries are accurate, there isn't a plotline you judge or characters to hate. It is a book full of words in English and Cyrillic Russian.

However, I can tell you how useful it is. This is the size of a supermarket paperback novel, so it is highly portable. To make a dictionary this small and affordable, you have to sacrifice on a little readability. I haven't found anything that is unreadable, but some words need to be squinted at longer than others.

If this is the only dictionary you can afford, you will do just fine with it. However, I will carry this one in my laptop bag and search for a more readable version to keep on my desk.

Since Russian can be a very difficult language, don't expect to get much use out of this dictionary if it's your only reference-- you will need a book on grammar and usage for the entries to make much sense. However, with some very basic knowledge of Russian grammar, this is a very helpful reference, especially for writing in early stages of learning Russian.

Included in the back is are the rough English equivalents of the Cyrillic letters. This is especially helpful if, like me, you learned the Cyrillic alphabet primarily in groups of related sounds, rather than in alphabetical order.

However, even as pocket dictionaries go, the print in this one is very small and blurry-- not well printed at all. To an English speaker very small differences in the appearance of some Cyrillic letters can make a difference in pronunciation, and if you haven't known the Cyrillic alphabet long and are unfamiliar with the variations of some letters in type, the poor printing can make this dictionary quite difficult to use at first.

This book is good for those who speak English and have a good English background. However, this book is not convenient for kids or new learners. It has no pronouncing tips of words which is important for everybody. Personally I would not suggest buy this book. It is better to buy dictionary with pronouncing tips. When I bought this book I did not know that it has no word pronouncing tips. In addition it would be a good idea for sellers to give detailed information about their products. My family found this book inconvenient to use.

Of course, like mentioned below, the entire russian language is basically phonetic. Knowing the letters greatly helps when using this reference guide. It has helped me alot since i have purchased it. I am currently taking a russian course and so far have not found a word missing from this book. The only problem i have with this book at all is the mention of what each letter sounds like in the back. I have a better conversion, it was given to me by my instructor. However, if i needed to, i could use the sound conversion in the back. This produst is overall a great product, and russian is a wonderful language.

When I began dating a woman from Russian, I decided that having a good Russian dictionary would be a good idea. This is the best one I could find. I hear there's an even better that was once published by Penguin, but is no longer available (I can't imagine why they'd stop making the best). My girlfriend says this Oxford edition is very good and we use it a lot.