reciprocity for bilingual dictionaries?

[Benjamin Barrett]

This has long been a point of irritation for me, too.

Use any Japanese to English dictionary and you'll find all sorts of
interesting cultural items. But if you forget the Japanese word after
you look it up, good luck because E to J dictionaries don't include
cultural words like clothes changing day (i.e., summer to winter and
vice-versa) and summer kimono (yukata). I assume they aren't included
because you don't run into those sorts of words in English corpora. The
problem is that the student needs those words really desperately.

The J/E dictionary quality has gotten better over the years (and the new
Green Goddess by Kenkyusha in May promises to be better yet), and more
of those items are being included, but it's still a nightmare for the
student.

Benjamin Barrett
Bringing fancy tiramisu and mont blanc to Seattle

> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society
> [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Peter A. McGraw
> Sent: Wednesday, 15 January, 2003 14:08
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: reciprocity for bilingual dictionaries?
>
>
> I would say there's a more interesting definition of
> reciprocity in reference to bilingual dictionaries than the
> word-for-word notion hazarded below.  In fact, the lack of
> one such reciprocity is the subject of one of the griping
> letters that I have been meaning to write for years.