Buying a Latin Dictionary
I recommend buying a good Latin dictionary.
My reference Latin dictionary is the Loescher Latin-Italian 3rd Edition. This is one of the two best reference Latin dictionaries world-wide.
Lately, it comes with the inclusion of a CD-ROM and this will help learners to ease the path of finding declined words and conjugated verbs. This is why I am mentioning it here. The "trouble" of converting from Italian into English is fairly simple and worth the effort if you can get access to all the declensions and conjugations.
I am searching for somenthing similar in English and as soon as I find a suitable one, I will post a note on this page. In the meantime I suggest to buy the Oxford Latin Dictionary, desk version. This is a fairly modest edition but quite practical, and I do recommend it. You can also try some on-line Latin dictionaries. I have not used them but I am aware that they exist.
I am also building an electronic version of a concise Latin-English dictionary using the relational database Microsoft Access. So far I have listed some 450 words and relative full declension for each entry and full conjugation for each verb. When it will be ready I will make it available for download.
Here is the Loescher Link: www.loescher.it
Using a Latin Dictionary
The problem with using a Latin dictionary is that all words are listed by the nominative case. This means that if you need to look a word in any other case other than the nominative, you will not find it. Thus, if you were to look for ancillas, or ancillam, or pulchrae, they are not listed. The reason is that the authors of the dictionary assume that you know your rules of declension, hence by looking at the nominative case, you can then derive all the others. Thus, if the word you wanted to look at were, say, ancillis, then the dictionary expects you to know that ancillis is the ablative or dative plural of ancilla, hence you should look for ancilla and not ancillis! Initially, it will be a bit of a struggle, but after a little practice you will get over it.
If the dictionary came with a CDROM then that would enable you to enter the word in any case, genitive, ablative, etc., and the answer comes to your screen in the canonical form, as explained on the left panel of this page. For a learner this would be a major advantage.
DOWNLOAD SMALL LATIN DICTIONARY NOW (6/JUNE/2008)
This small Latin dictionary is offered as a temporary aid. It contains about 3500 words. I found the text file on the internet but did not note the source. It was a public domain file hence there is no copyright infringment. I will try to relocate the source for due acknowledgment and citation.
A quick inspection has revealed some inaccuracies and some errors, but on the whole the majority of translations are correct.
I suggest not to print the file and just use it for reference on your PC. I plan to review it and make corrections where appropriate.
The file is zipped. If you right click on DICTIONARY you can then click on "Save Target As" on the next menu and download the file to your hard disk.
If you left click on DICTIONARY you are able to open the file on another window, but the procedure is more complex and not recommended. The unzipped file will take just under 1 MByte of disk space.
Pagina recensita: ante diem undevicesimum Kalendas Februarias, MMIX