księżycowy wrote:Tere!
I'm interesting in learning some Estonian in the near future, and have been trying to get some resources to that end. I've gotten some really good textbooks, but I have yet to find a good dictionary. I was wondering if anyone knew of a good Estonian <-> English or Estonian -> English dictionary (preferably both ways, but if I have to, I'll take from Estonian to English only)? Having looked into the grammar and pronunciation a bit, I was wondering if there were any dictionaries that give any info on that sort of stuff, otherwise the dictionary would be hard for a learner like me to use.
I've seen that
this dictionary is listed on Amazon at a good price and a good review, but one review is not much to go on.
Any help would be appreciated!
Tänan!
I'm not familiar with the dictionary you linked to. I am familiar with a few others. I will copy from each one the entry for
leht so that you can get an idea of how words are presented.
Eesti-Inglise sõnaraamat by Enn Veldi. (Estonian-to-English only.)
leht leaf (
pl leaves), (
palmi-) frond; (
raamatu-) page; (
paberi-) sheet; (
ajaleht) newspaper
leht nätsu stick/piece of gum
lehte minema break into leaf
lehte pöörama turn the page
lehti rehitsema rake leaves
Eesti-Inglise sõnaraamat koolidele by C. Parts. (Estonian-to-English only.)
leht (
puu~, raamatu~ jms.) leaf* [li:f]; (
paberi~) sheet
[ʃi:t]; (
aja~) newspaper
['nju:speipə], paper
lehte: ~ minema come* into leaf
Eesti-Inglise sõnaraamat koolidele by J. Silvet. (Estonian-to-English only.)
leht (
puu~, raamatu~ jms.) leaf (
pl. leaves); (
metalli~,
paberi~) sheet; (
aja~) (news)paper
lehte: ~ minema = lehistumaEstonian-English English-Estonian Dictionary by Ksana Kyiv. (English-to-Estonian and Estonian-to-English)
leht [leht]
n.leaf
leaf [li:f]
n. leht;
~let n. leheke; lendlehtEesti-Inglise sõnaraamat by Paul Saagpakk. (Estonian-to-English only.)
leht [-he] 175
s. leaf (
pl. leaves) (
ka raamatu-); (
paberi-, metalli-) sheet (of paper) (
õhuke sheet;
sae- blad;
E. pop. (news-)paper;
lehed (pl.) leaves;
lehelt laulma to sing at sight;
puud lasevad v. langetavad lehti the trees are shedding their leaves;
(aja-)lehe tellimine magazine subscription;
ta keeras ~i he turned over the pages;
et see lehte läheb (E. fam) that it will go in;
~edega -leaved
(tarvit. er. liitsõnades); vt. lehte, lehtes; ~-
atr. foliaceous;
~adru 328
s. (bot.) tangle.... (continues for 4 more lines)
Of these, Saagpakk's is by far the most comprehensive (it's huge) and marks palatization and overlong syllables and declination forms, which the others don't. However, the words are pretty dated, some back to before World War II from what I understand. It's also difficult to find and expensive unless you happen across a used copy.
Ksana Kyiv's is tiny by comparison but you can usually find it for less than $10 and it's not bad for a beginner, and useful that you can search for words in either language. I suspect the K. Kiik one you linked to may be better though, just based on the fact that Kyiv's has 10,000 words and Kiik's says it has 40,000.
Online,
http://kn.eki.ee/ has already been mentioned. Another good one is
http://www.keeleveeb.ee/, which lets you search a huge number of different online dictionaries at once - several English-Estonian dictionaries, Estonian-to-other-languages, several monolingual dictionaries, etymology, Estonian dialects, morphology, etc. It's excellent. Also I'm not sure if
http://www.filosoft.ee/gene_et/ has been mentioned yet but it will give you all the case-forms and conjugations of any word, much more comprehensive than ANY dictionary in terms of grammatical forms.
Really I'd probably go with one of the smaller Eng-Est/Est-Eng dictionaries (Kyiv or Kiik) along with the online resources, then get a larger dictionary later if you feel the need. I use the online resources more than anything now.