Free Russian-English-Russian Dictionary -- with Editing Options

[Benjamin Sher]

Dear Colleagues:

ONE.

I have just discovered another FREE Win95 Russian-
English-Russian dictionary program that is ideal for teachers and
student, it is called "Dictionary", produced by the Dutch Dictionary
Project. It is available from:

http://www.theoffice.net/dictionary

The Russian-English word list includes 22,600 words, the English
word list includes 31, 700 words.

When you get to this site, be sure to look for the "Win95 Download"
link at the top of the left frame. The program is available ONLY for
Win95 (and I imagine for Win98 as well).

Then look for the Russian program at the bottom The file name is:

dict rus.exe (424K).

Download it and install it and make sure you have Cyrillic fonts in
your Windows 95 such as the FREE MS Windows Multilanguage
Support that you can get by using your update button in Internet
Explorer to download it or by using Netscape or any other browser
to go to:

http://www.microsoft.com

and then searching for it.

I imagine by now every member of the list has Cyrillic support for
their Win95/98/NT so that should suffice.

What's great about this little dictionary is that

A) The word-list is extensive without being overwhelming and is thus
ideal for the first two years of Russian.

B) The word list can be EDITED, that is, you can ADD any words you
wish.

C) Ironically enough, one of its chief weaknesses can be turned into
a teaching aid, namely, it lists only the imperfective aspect of verbs.
This deficiency can be easily remedied by adding the perfective
aspect through the Editing mode but it can also be used by the
student as a self-monitoring, self-testing tool. In fact, the Editing
mode allows both teacher and student to do an awful lot of things
with this neat, flexible program.

TWO.

Recently I informed members of the list of an excellent FREE Win95
Russian-English-Russian dictionary program by the name of YXO
(sic!) available at:

http://www.yxo.com

It can also be used as a thesaurus and includes Basic and
Advanced Language Tests. It also includes an email program, which
however, does not seem to work. I have contacted Oleg, the author,
who promised to let me know when the next, improved version will
become available ( in about a month or two). Let's hope the email
part, especially, is fixed and that editing of the word list is made
possible. I have asked him specifically about that.

Yours,

Benjamin


Benjamin Sher
Sher's Russian Web and Index
http://personal.msy.bellsouth.net/msy/s/h/sher07/