| Summary: Before relying on a German English dictionary, be sure that it is one that adheres to the newest orthography, and be sure to check whether the dictionary uses primarily American or British English, as that can make a big difference in a German to English dictionary. |
At one time, choosing a good German English dictionary was a very difficult task due to the large number of variations in spelling and pronunciation that various German-speaking regions maintained. With the introduction of a sweeping language reform law in 1998, that has all changed. For the first time in nearly a hundred years, German now has a standard orthography providing rules for consistency in spelling, hyphenation, and pronunciation.
The reason for this change is that various regions within Germany, as well as the countries of Switzerland, Lichtenstein, and Austria, are all used to complete autonomy where the German language is concerned. Therefore, differences in spelling and pronunciation proliferated in these areas, and were even ratified in the last major German orthography law, put into place in 1902. The 1902 law was only passed after thirty years of negotiations between the German speaking countries and regions within Germany itself, and as a result, was riddled with inconsistencies. Despite the difficulties in the language, and despite attempts to revise the standards after World War II, the 1902 law stayed in effect because German officials feared new legislation would further increase the ideological split between West and East Germany. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the way opened up for negotiations about the standardization of German to begin.
Obviously, with the official spellings and pronunciations changing so recently, the new orthography renders obsolete all German-English dictionaries published prior to 1998, or at least prior to the initial declaration in 1996. When choosing a German-English dictionary for general use, ensuring that the dictionary adheres to the 1998 orthography is of prime importance. Another feature that should be checked is whether the dictionary uses primarily American or British English. This affects how the dictionary’s idiomatic phrases are translated, and a British English dictionary will not be helpful to an American English speaker, and vice versa.
One feature very important to new students of German is the inclusion of essays and charts about German grammar. Since German is a fully-inflected language, noun spellings change based on gender and number, and verb spellings change based on tense, subject gender, and whether the sentence is formal (”Sie” form) or informal (”du” form.) In addition, sentence structure in German is vastly different from sentence structure in English, with nouns, adjectives, and adverbs often appearing at the beginning and middle of the sentence while the verb appears only at the end. If the dictionary focuses on noun declension, verb forms, and sentence structure in separate sections, the student is likely to have an easier time learning German.
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