Good English-Swahili Swahili-English Dictionary

[Julien-223]

Hi,

I'd like to buy a good English-Swahili Swahili-English dictionary, but seeing the covers and prices isn't helping me. I live in Paris and have no access to an English bookshop. I just need a big, regular dictionary with a lot of entries and simple translations, no "teach yourself", "swahili proverbs", "Practical", "Zaire dialect" or any other specific version...

Does anybody have a suggestion?

Thank you in advance !

Julien-223

[zeme]

Below is a list of links related to Swahili dictionaries. I suggest you read reviews off Amazon and skim through the dictionaries by clicking on the cover in order to find out which one is best.

en-sw
http://www.worldlanguage.com/Products/S ... /Page1.htm
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_ ... ry&x=0&y=0
(online) http://africanlanguages.com/swahili/
(online) http://www.freelang.net/online/swahili.php
(online) http://www.kamusi.org/
(online) http://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Cat%C3%A9gorie:swahili
(online) http://sw.wiktionary.org/wiki/Mwanzo

fr-sw
http://www.amazon.fr/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1 ... ctionnaire

more books
http://multilingualbooks.com/swahili.html

[Julien-223]

Thank you very much,

If anybody has experience with SW-EN EN-SW dictionaries, I would be very grateful to hear about it!

I already have Alphonse Lenselaer's Dictionnaire Swahili-Français, but I'm really not convinced. First, it's only translating Swahili into French. Then it focuses on the Congolese version of Swahili.
And finally its structure and definitions are incredibly complicated, confusing, and I would say, pedantic. I.e:
"+PEKE, n., surtout PEKE, état d'être seul, unique, isolé, esseulé"
He could have just said: "solitude"

"-Endana, réc. marcher ou tourner de bonne façon, avec ensemble, avec un agencement parfait, tourner rond : se dit d'une mécanique, de rouages..."
He could have just said: "to conform with"

And don't forget that an old version of the FSI's Swahili basic courses is also online: http://fsi-language-courses.org/Content ... ge=Swahili