Best Armenian Dictionary?

[Sako_Aper]

I'm looking for a good English-Armenian, Armenian-English dictionary.

 

I wish the company Langenscheidt published an Armenian dictionary, but they don't. Langenscheidt is the company that publishes those yellow foreign language dictionaries, about 500-700 pages, but they seem really popular so I'm assuming they're good. Also, my mother has one that is a Spanish-English, English-Spanish dictionary from Langenscheidt and it appears to be good.

 

Does anyone have any recommendations of which to buy? I would prefer an Eastern Armenian one and that it was an Armenian-English, English-Armenian.

[Armenak]

I found three here...

http://www.abrilbooks.com/Bookinfo/Diction...gArmCompact.htm

http://www.abrilbooks.com/Bookinfo/Diction...arotBararan.htm

http://www.abrilbooks.com/Bookinfo/Diction...gDictionary.htm

[Proud EXPAT]

http://www.abrilbooks.com/Bookinfo/Diction...arotBararan.htm

 

an awesome one. i have quite a few բառարան-s and this is the best one.

[rostom]

http://www.abrilbooks.com/Bookinfo/Diction...arotBararan.htm

 

an awesome one. i have quite a few բառարան-s and this is the best one.

 

Ex-Pat, your link does not work. I am assuming you meant this one: http://www.abrilbooks.com/Bookinfo/Diction...arotBararan.htm

 

Although I don't have first hand experience with this dictionary in particular, let me just point out one thing to be careful with these pocket-sized, Armenia/Yerevan printed dictionaries: they tend to use non-Armenian, Russian (and sometimes English) influenced words for some of their definitions. Good example is the word "potato" which translates to kartofil/կարտօֆիլ in some of these dictionries. Obviously a Russian derived word only used in the RA. There are many other such cases I have come across with these dictionaries.

[Proud EXPAT]

Ex-Pat, your link does not work. I am assuming you meant this one: http://www.abrilbooks.com/Bookinfo/Diction...arotBararan.htm

 

Although I don't have first hand experience with this dictionary in particular, let me just point out one thing to be careful with these pocket-sized, Armenia/Yerevan printed dictionaries: they tend to use non-Armenian, Russian (and sometimes English) influenced words for some of their definitions. Good example is the word "potato" which translates to kartofil/կարտօֆիլ in some of these dictionries. Obviously a Russian derived word only used in the RA. There are many other such cases I have come across with these dictionaries.

 

Yup rostom, that's the one. same link, mine didn't work for whatever reason.

 

I understand your concern regarding some words, such as kartofil, but then again what is the correct word for potato in Armenian? "Getnaxncor" or "patates" is what western Armenians use, but "getnaxncor" is another root in Armenia and I doubt "patates" is a correct Armenian name for potato.

 

I use this dictionary A LOT, and I rarely come across words that are not 'correct' Armenian, and overall it's a very good one. I have a few and this is definitely the best one.

 

I'm also pretty good at knowing what words are not Armenian and correct many of my Hayastantsi friends when they use words they think are Armenian yet are Russian or Turkish. Popular examples 'shalvar' 'trashvel' 'jan' 'aziz' 'jeb' etc. If any of these words appear in this particular dictionary, they are noted as slang terms, which is really cool to know.

Edited December 28, 2006 by Proud EXPAT

[Armenak]

I just might buy it the next time I'm at the Abril Bookstore.

[Sarkis11]

 

...same link, mine didn't work for whatever reason.

 

 

Even though five years have passed since the last activity on this thread, let me add something practical:

 

Posting links to bookstore pages is not a good idea, because bookstores don't keep always the same links. Even before clicking on any of these links, I had a very strong suspicion that they would not work.

 

Especially in the case of Abril, things must have changed after Harout's death (Oct 17, 2010). I used to always ask him about books and he would give me advice. He knew so much! He would tell me about books, concerts, lectures, conferences and various Armenian events.

 

Harout was a great guy, we will all miss him. (Harout Yeretzian was the founder and owner of Abril Books)

Edited July 20, 2011 by Sarkis11

[Pararanakir]

I'm looking for a good English-Armenian, Armenian-English dictionary.

 

I wish the company Langenscheidt published an Armenian dictionary, but they don't. Langenscheidt is the company that publishes those yellow foreign language dictionaries, about 500-700 pages, but they seem really popular so I'm assuming they're good. Also, my mother has one that is a Spanish-English, English-Spanish dictionary from Langenscheidt and it appears to be good.

 

Does anyone have any recommendations of which to buy? I would prefer an Eastern Armenian one and that it was an Armenian-English, English-Armenian.

 

While you are trying to find a good dictionary, you might want to use the Eastern Armenian National Corpus (a corpus is a large text collection, in this case it is fully searchable and 85% of the words in it are translated into English). You can search for words in Armenian and in English. If you search for an Armenian word, the search function returns a list of all the contexts in which the word is used. To see a translation of the word, just pass the cursor over the word(s) and you'll see a pop-up window with the information about the word (meaning, part of speech, and so on). What's great about this site is that you can search for words in context, so for example if you want to find ճեռք ձգել as opposed to just ձգել, you can enter the two words into the search windows.

 

www.eanc.net

 

One more thing: you can search either for the exact form of the word (click Wordform) or for the root or lexeme (click Lexeme). If you click Lexeme then you will see all the forms of the word, that is, search for ձգել and you'll get contexts containing every form of the verb: ձգվում, ձգեց, ձգեցինք, and so on.

 

Good luck!