Product Description
Compact and comprehensive, the Berlitz Pocket Dictionary is suitable for travellers, students or professionals. Blue headwords make entries acessible while its size makes the book handy and portable. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great pocket reference
For its size (about the same as a deck of cards, completely reasonable to slip in your pocket while traveling), this dictionary performs very well. I am moving to Sweden from California in a few months, speaking no Swedish, and it's been helpful to look up terms from my online housing searches and going through visa and other document websites. It has had almost all the words I needed included.

One note for beginners like me- remember that the special vowels such as "å" come at the END of the alphabet... seems strange to find å after Z, but there you go!

Seems that there is not a clear winner for the bigger desktop reference dictionaries, I may stick with this one for now. ... Read more

Product Description
Designed to be a child's very first foreign language dictionary (5-10 years). 500 entries, each accompanied by a large illustration. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

GREAT BOOK - too bad the ink has pungent toxic vapors
This book is very nice and can even be useful for adult beginners, since it contains some fundamentals adult language books skip over.

Unfortunately, this book uses a very pungent, strong, petro-chemically based ink that gave me awful headaches.I wouldn't be surprised if the chemical vaporsreeking out of this book might even be banned in Sweden.

I am severely chemically sensitive.I tried to gas it out by putting it near the heater for a few weeks but it wasn't enough.

To use this book, I had to put on a mask, cut this book cut off the binding, scan the pages into my computer, and print them out on my HP ink jet, which uses an innocuous ink that does not give me problems. I punched holes in that original pages and used one-inch ring binders for them, in case I need to copy it again. I will store it away.The copy I made for using with my child will go into a regular report binder.

It upsets me that most children's books use such toxic inks. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that with their developing minds, they can be effected by "second hand" chemical vapors.Forget about the war on cancer, alzheimers, etc.How about the war on stuff like this that may cumulative cause such chronic degeneration of cells?

Many publications use plant-based ink and they don't bother me.It looks the same but it is not toxic.

Great for children and adults alike
This illustrated dictionary is a great tool for teaching children the Swedish words for objects and also for building the vocabulary of adults who are beginning Swedish.

The best thing about this book is that it gives the definitive form of all of the objects. It doesn't leave you wondering, as in some books, if a particular noun is an "en" word or an "ett" word.

For example, for "girl" it shows a picture of a girl, says "girl" in English and says "(en) flicka" in Swedish. So now you would know that if you wanted to say "a girl" in Swedish, you would say "en flicka." For "the girl" you would know to say add the "en" (for this case, it becomes just "n") to the end of "flicka" to get "flickan."

The pronounciation key in the front of the book is also very useful and the proper pronounciation is also found under each Swedish word.

What a Swede thinks of it
I grew up here in the states by my mom who is from Sweden. I have wanted a book just like this for my classroom and have been able to teach the children in my class words of common objects. It has also helped me touch up on my Swedish vocabulary as well. This book is awesome.I love the fact that it has the pictures along with the object. The best part is the correct phonetic pronunciation that the author placed underneath each word. ... Read more

Product Description
About Swedish

• Swedish is an Indo-European language that belongs to the North Germanic branch of the Germanic languages, all of which derive from Old Norse.

• This course teaches rikssvenska (sometimes referred to as Standard Swedish) as spoken in and around the capital region of Stockholm.

• Swedish is spoken by approximately 10 million people, mostly in Sweden and parts of Finland.

• Norwegian and Swedish are considered mutually intelligible, with Danish also being very similar.

• The Swedish alphabet uses the 26 Latin letters, plus three additional: Å / Å, Ä / Ä, and Ö / Ö.

Swedish, Comprehensive

• Thirty 30-minute lessons, totaling 15 hours of spoken Swedish language learning. This course replaces our original Compact Swedish with new and expanded vocabulary, scenarios, grammar and structures.

• One hour of Reading Lessons - After an initial introduction to the spoken language, reading instruction is integrated into the program. You'll learn to sound out letters, reading words, phrases, and eventually sentences.

• Essential grammar and vocabulary – greetings, numbers, ordering food and drink, dealing with currency, scheduling a meal or meeting, giving and asking for directions, going shopping, visiting friends, making plans for the evening, taking trips, organizing transportation and talking about family. Speak comfortably about the past and make plans for the future!

• Learn to understand much of what you hear, and speak with near-native pronunciation.

• No mindless repetition! Converse with native speakers in natural (and useful!) conversations at an intermediate level.

• Easy, fast, fun and effective – We will guarantee your satisfaction and a measurable level of "spoken proficiency" or your money back (rules and regulations apply, see http://www.pimsleur.com/Proficiency-Guarantee for more details).

• Learn anytime, anywhere. No computer necessary! Unlike expensive software programs which tie learners to a computer, Pimsleur courses are available in CD or mp3 format to meet your needs.

... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Your grandpa's primer, but useful to accompany a more friendly contemporary course
Back in the day, language courses in the Teach Yourself line made many more demands on the student than they do nowadays, expecting one to be able to learn a foreign language the same way one mastered one's schoolboy Latin. R.J. McClean's Swedish course exemplifies this era.

Instead of basing the course on a series of chapters dealing with some particular part of day-to-day life (ordering in a restaurant, going to the doctor, asking directions) like contemporary Teach Yourself courses, McClean has twenty-three chapters each dedicated to a grammatical category. In chapters one and two, he gives you the entire world of Swedish noun paradigms. There are sentences for translation after each long flood of conjugations and declensions, but no dialogues

It is pretty obvious that with a course like this on its own, you'll never get beyond a passive reading command of Swedish. For learning conversational Swedish, I'd recommend Gladis Hirt's Swedish: An Elementary Grammar-Reader as your main introductory textbook. Stay far away from the latest incarnation of TY's Swedish, which goes to the opposite extreme from old TY courses, and gives you tonnes of idiomatic dialogue with little grammar to help you make your own sentences.

But even if it is no good as a primary textbook, McClean's old course does tell you a lot about the language that you are not likely to see in friendlier textbooks. For example, he gives the old plural endings for Swedish verbs, now archaic but likely to occasionally be encountered in literary texts. There are a number of Swedish proverbs and idioms here, enabling the student to better understand stock components of colloquial speech. Some of the translation exercises, especially those from English into Swedish, are quite rigorous and beneficial, though there is no answer key and one would need to ask a native speaker for corrections.

I disagree with another reviewer who praises the chapter on pronunciation. True, this is enormously detailed (35 pages), but nowadays there are so many Swedish pronunciation cassettes and CDs out there that one no longer has to work through a printed phonetic transcription like in these old courses. Also, it gives no information at all about the pronunciation of Finland Swedish, which this student at Helsingfors Universitet would have liked.

Excellent section on pronunciation
Although this book has been out of print for years, it should still be obtained by any serious student of Swedish. The opening section on pronunciation is outstanding; clear, well-written, and not too technical. The rest of the book is essentially a grammar text with exercises, so for more practical information the interested learner would need to get a more modern book like the newer "Teach Yourself Swedish" or "Colloquial Swedish". However, for traditional "grammar and translation", this book is still useful. I got my copy (1975 printing) many years ago when it was selling for [money]. ... Read more

Product Description
Langenscheidt expands its popular bilingual dictionary series with the addition of five new languages: Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish.The trusted Universal Dictionary ensures quick and accurate reference with thousands of clearly arranged entries and modern vocabulary.Each dictionary is concise, compact work for use at home, in the office, at school or while traveling. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

The small size has it's downfalls.....
From what I've heard, this is the best Swedish/English dictionary dictionary on the market, but I still think it could be improved. I have found that there are quite a few words which are NOT in this dictionary. My biggest warning/complaint, however, is the small size. Sure, it's great for someone who is traveling and wants to tuck it in a pocket or purse, but if you are trying to read it with middle aged eyes, forget it! It would be nice if it came with a choice of two sizes, a tiny one to take with you and one with normal size print to use when studying the language at home.

Little Book Big on Content
Fits in your pocket.Full of helpful references, common phrase translations and grammar.Helpful and easily accessible.

Great little book
One of the only two Swedish-English, English-Swedish dictionaries, of any size, with easy-to-read phonetic pronunciation guide.This is something really important with Swedish, since the pronunciation is so unusual to English speaking people.The book is also a cute little size for traveling, and the colored headwords makes for easy eye-scanning for words.The best little one out there.

p.s. I tried Rosetta Stone, and was very disappointed - a big waste of time and money - see my review.

Good content for its size
Content is good enough for everyday tasks, its plastic cover makes it durable and its size easy to carry everywhere

Exceptional
This dictionary is a godsend. Before I had this I was stuck with using an online dictionary or the small dictionaries in the back of my grammar book. Now I can easily look up any word and fine the pronunciation with it too. ... Read more

Product Description
Learn the Swedish language easily. ... Read more