|
The Collins Talking Spanish-English Dictionary is a CD-ROM that forms part of a new concept in talking dictionaries, and is designed for all learners of Spanish as a foreign language. Aimed at a range of language learners--from beginners to professional and business users--it is a means of being able to advance their Spanish vocabulary. The dictionary is touted as the highest quality bilingual dictionary around, and this is not a wildly implausible claim, for it is particularly strong on the idiosyncracies of the various Spanish-speaking countries. It is one of the few dictionaries around that recognises the importance of distinguishing between, for instance, the various guaguas ("bus" in Mexico; "baby" in Chile); and each definition comes with a
|
sign as to whether it is used in Spain or in the Americas. The dictionary has some audio elements. Each of the words in the dictionary and in the accompanying language learning exercises is pronounced by a native speaker; the only criticism might be that some of the Latin American accents are not always particular to the words used in each country. Nevertheless, the dictionary also comes with a set of tools that can be uploaded onto your PC and used to translate text on your machine. As a computer dictionary, this is hard to beat. The only major criticism might be that, on its own, it is not enough to develop a really strong grammatical base but, taken together with a good course, it will be an effective tool for language learning. --Toby Green
|
