Help with the choice of a dictionary (in Finland!)

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Woods
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Help with the choice of a dictionary (in Finland!)

Postby Woods » 2015-11-08, 18:18

A friend of mine is going to Finland for Christmas. I’m intending to ask her to buy some dictionaries for me: for sure I’m going to need a Finnish unilingual dictionary – can you please recommend the best? It should fit in one book, but have all common words explained the best possible way, with examples – and no English inside! If it comes with a CD, that would be perfect. Preferably, it should not contain too many abbreviations like some German dictionaries – where they put the first letter followed by a dot instead of the headword in every example – it doesn’t help for memorising the sentence!

I’ve heard of this one:

http://www.gummerus.fi/fi/kirja/9789512 ... alaisille/

Is it good? Does it have only Finnish inside? Is it the best, or should I ask my friend to look for something better?

I’m not sure how much luggage she’ll be able to carry, or whether she’ll be able to send it to me directly from Finland, but I might also ask her to buy me a bilingual dictionary, because my Finnish vocabulary is less than basic for the moment. Do you know what would be a good choice of an English-Finnish dictionary, or something that works in both directions? But I guess this would be easier to find and I can do it later on myself – the most important is to get a monolingual dictionary, so please help essentially with my first question!

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Virankannos
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Re: Help with the choice of a dictionary (in Finland!)

Postby Virankannos » 2015-11-09, 23:48

The most comprehensive and up-to-date dictionary is probably Kielitoimiston sanakirja. Luckily it is fully available online (http://www.kielitoimistonsanakirja.fi/), so you it won't take any space in your friend's luggage :) I don't know anything about the dictionary you linked, but based on its name I guess that it would probably be a better option for someone on your level.

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Woods
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Re: Help with the choice of a dictionary (in Finland!)

Postby Woods » 2015-11-10, 21:24

Hi!

Thank you for the excellent link!

I wasn't aware there was a comprehensive Finnish dictionary fully available online.

What institution is Kielitoimiston?

Is this available for downloading / installing on a PC?

Do you know a good bilingual dictionary as well, or any other good monolingual dictionaries online?

In this case I may spare my friend the task... Or I may still ask her to get me one dictionary on paper cause I think it'll be motivating to have it on my desk :)

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Virankannos
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Re: Help with the choice of a dictionary (in Finland!)

Postby Virankannos » 2015-11-12, 22:07

Kielitoimisto or officially kielenhuolto-osasto ("Language maintenance department") is a part of Kotus, Institute for the Languages of Finland, which operates under the Ministry of Education and Culture. So it's an official government institution.

Unfortunately, the dictionary doesn't seem to be available for downloading and requires an Internet connection to use. A good Finnish-English dictionary online is Redfox. It's free and maintained by a private company, but for what I've seen, the Finnish-English part is quite good. There are other languages available too but I can't say much about them.

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Woods
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Re: Help with the choice of a dictionary (in Finland!)

Postby Woods » 2015-11-13, 10:48

Thanks a lot!


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