A language learners’ forum

I’ve recently started using LWT and I’m trying to figure out what the best dictionaries are for each language. My ideal dictionary:

1- fits well in the window and can be used without opening a pop-up window
2- has a large number of entries
3- can find the word no matter its case or tense
4- tells me what form the word is in and indicates its base form (and preferably also has a link to the entire conjugation/declination)
5- has common collocations and expressions

Some of you have been using LWT for a while. What dictionaries have you found to be the best for the languages you are studying?

I don't know any dictionaries that fit all your criteria. Especially 4 is a bust. You will get the base form, but it won't tell you what form your original search term is. It would be great if Cooljugator could be integrated into LWT, but since their search doesn't work via the URL, I haven't figured out how to do it. It would already help if one could tell LWT not to automatically append the search string, but well ...

How good a dictionary is also depends on the language - Lingvo live is good for Russian, but whether it has example sentences seems to depend on the language. It does for Russian, but not for Spanish. Also, the dictionaries aren't on the same website aren't all equally good. The Spanish lingvo live dictionary finds "pelotudo" - my typical test word -, but the French dictionary doesn't find any slang. I tend to stick with my usual choices: lingvo live for Russian, wordreference for Spanish and French & Cooljugator in another tab.

Word reference for Spanish does tell me the base form and tells me what form the word is in, so I'm pretty satisfied with it for Spanish, though it could be better, of course. For my other languages, I'm still looking.

LWT makes it possible to sort words by frequency and export translations into Anki so I tried to be specific in the beginning but eventually figured that I'm not using the info anyway. A quick look says that I've got 19.376 words translated or ignored (names) just for German. So now I aim for a basic translation and edit it if I stumble upon a new context where the old translation doesn't fit.

If a dictionary gave me a perfect summary of base form and declination I might rethink, but often it can be difficult just to figure out the translation of a word. As a result, my main dictionaries are Glosbe and Google Translate API. They integrate with LWT so I can click on a word to autofill - no need to copy/paste. If I feel lost, I translate the whole sentence (GTr) to figure out the basic meaning.



Besides those two I use Linguee. Especially the "external sources" with a bunch of real world examples and their translations tend to be helpful. Unfortunately they don't offer any API so I tend to stick with Glosbe and Google Translate.

blaurebell wrote:It would be great if Cooljugator could be integrated into LWT...

Cooljugator also works with Hawaiian - I'm impressed!

I have been working with LWT (Installing it using Docker) and then configuring it. Here are some dictionaries I found useful for general purposes, and some specific to French. I'll add to this later as I update my settings for Mandarin and Italian

There is also a spreadsheet on google drive with some dictionaries listed. It would be good if we could pull these into here and test them?
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NdSuuFVVLX3an_ED4nlJYnH3zY_h7Oz6AXxfqvCScgM/edit?hl=en_US&hl=en_US#gid=0

Configure new dictionaries for LWT;
### is used to as an indicator to pass the word you want to look up. An * in front is used for sites (like google translate) which will not work in a frame.

Wordreference:
Change the "fren" in this example to the two iso codes you want, this example uses FR, and EN to get FREN


linguee.com



lingvozone

You'll have to go to the site and run an example through in order to determine the language_id of the languages you want. French is 6 and English is 23 in this example.



These don't like frames, have to open popup so put a * before the URL





Specific to French



https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Main_Page
You can use wiktionary to look up words, but it doesn't do translations per se. You just put the ISO code of the language you want into the URL here (FR in this example)

Dictionaries that I use currently (like, today) but that are different from the spreadsheet on Google Drive:

Ancient Greek Dictionary 2

Spanish Dictionary 1 URI:

Latin 1 Dictionary 1 URI:
Latin 2 Dictionary 2 URI: :

In the past (definitely not today) I used for German
German Dictionary 1 URI:
German Dictionary 2 URI:

EDIT BY ADMIN: Fixed the URL links to be code links so people are able to copy them into LWT.

Any good ones for Russian? I'm currently using Linguee, Lingvo, and Yandex.

I'm usually a fan of openrussian.org, since it gives word frequency and other helpful info, but for some reason it can't handle words that have been modified in any way when used through LWT, even if I make it a pop-up. Yet if I copy/paste the same word directly on the site it works fine.

themethod wrote:Any good ones for Russian? I'm currently using Linguee, Lingvo, and Yandex.

I'm usually a fan of openrussian.org, since it gives word frequency and other helpful info, but for some reason it can't handle words that have been modified in any way when used through LWT, even if I make it a pop-up. Yet if I copy/paste the same word directly on the site it works fine.

There are a couple Russian ones in the spreadsheet I linked to. Try those out and post back here if they work.

rdearman wrote:

themethod wrote:Any good ones for Russian? I'm currently using Linguee, Lingvo, and Yandex.

I'm usually a fan of openrussian.org, since it gives word frequency and other helpful info, but for some reason it can't handle words that have been modified in any way when used through LWT, even if I make it a pop-up. Yet if I copy/paste the same word directly on the site it works fine.

There are a couple Russian ones in the spreadsheet I linked to. Try those out and post back here if they work.

Yep, I already checked that. Forvo is not a dictionary, and WordReference seems pretty basic, at least for Russian. Google, which is the default dictionary is okay, but I replaced it with Yandex, since it gives more info (base form, example sentences, etc.)

I also tried most of the other ones in your post; that's where I found Linguee. I like the look of bab.la, but I prefer to only have one dictionary that opens in a separate window, and I have Yandex in that slot. Lingvo is fine too, but it doesn't fit well in the LWT side window.