Foreign Perspectives

Whilst I was doing the Spanish course, the big dictionary was the way to go. On degree level courses small dictionaries just don’t cut it and neither do electronic ones, most of which have a considerably fewer number of words than even the smallest of the paper dictionaries.

However, when you’re settling down to read a novel in a foreign language the only way to go is with one of the pen scanners. Large dictionaries aren’t really a runner unless you always read in the one spot as you’re never going to carry around any kind of sizeable dictionary, are you?

Normal electronic dictionaries are a bit of a pain when you’re reading too in that they’re pretty slow, particularly if you’ve to look up a couple of words in a sentence.

With the pen dictionaries all those problems disappear at a stroke. They look up a whole line of words for you in one go for a start and they’re a similar size to the smaller paper dictionaries. The only downside is that they’re a good deal more expensive than normal electronic dictionaries and indeed more expensive than even the largest paper ones.