Hi guys! Welcome back to English with Max. In this video I'm going to talk about
monolingual and bilingual dictionaries and which type you should be using
if you are learning English, or in fact any foreign language. If you'd like to see
more videos from me, remember that I also post short videos on Instagram and
Facebook. If you'd like to receive a discount on my course on common mistakes,
the link is in the description. Now to the question of bilingual and
monolingual dictionaries. In case you don't know what I'm talking about,
a bilingual dictionary has two languages. For example, it might have French and
English. So if you look up a word in French, it will give you the English
equivalent, or several equivalents depending on the word. A monolingual
dictionary just has one language and it has definitions. The first thing I'll say
is that I'm probably not going to say what you expect me to say. It seems that
it's become trendy for English teachers to say that once you're no longer a
beginner, you should start to use monolingual dictionaries. The idea is
that if you use monolingual dictionaries, you'll start thinking more in English
and stop translating so much. I say "trendy" because it honestly just
seems like a popular thing to say. Maybe teachers are copying one another, or
maybe they used that method when they were learning a language themselves and
because it worked for them, they think it must work for everybody. But in reality,
it's not that black and white. In short, I think you should use whichever
dictionaries you find the most helpful. If you've been following me for a while,
you will know that I have quite a lot of experience
learning foreign languages. Most of the time I use bilingual dictionaries.
Even in the languages that I'm very fluent in. For example, in French and German I
reached a C2 level. I normally use bilingual dictionaries because I find it
faster. I normally only use monolingual dictionaries if after looking the word
up in a bilingual dictionary, I'm still unsure of the meaning. Maybe because the
dictionary didn't list all the possible meanings, or maybe the word was used in a
slightly strange context. That being said, I know that not everybody is the same as me.
I have a friend who's very good at languages - he's a translator and
interpreter - and most of the time he uses monolingual dictionaries. However, even he
sometimes uses bilingual dictionaries for things that are very concrete, like
parts of a car or animals. Because it's simpler.
Let's pretend that I'm a French speaker
and I'd like to know the meaning of this.
A large grey and white African
bird kept for its eggs and meat. Okay, so now I know that it's a bird and there's
a picture, which is... which is nice, but I'm not a bird expert, and I mean, that could
be a turkey for all I know. So let's try a bilingual dictionary.
Guinea fowl.
Oh okay, it's a "pintade".
When I was studying conference interpreting, our teachers
never asked us what dictionaries we were using. They didn't care. It was a non-issue.
The most important thing was that you understood what was being said and that
you expressed yourself accurately. What's important is often not what dictionary you
use, but how you use it. For example, some people, when they hear or read a new word,
will look it up in a dictionary and just read the first definition or meaning.
But as I'm sure you know, lots of words have several meanings, so you need to look at
the context. I'll also say that not all dictionaries are created equal. Some are
better than others. Google Translate, for example, has its
limitations. I'm not saying it's complete rubbish. For some languages it's good if
you want to hear how something is pronounced, and it also can be handy if
you see a sentence or a paragraph online in a foreign language, and you want
a rough idea of the meaning. But it's not ideal for individual words or expressions.
Let's look at the word "pool". I typed it into Google Translate,
I selected French and it gave me "bassin". Yes, there are several other
translations, but it's not clear when you should use them. However, if you look it
up on WordReference, you get several translations with short explanations and
example sentences. In other words, there's a lot more information. I'm not saying
that WordReference is perfect. There are sometimes mistakes, but I've also seen
mistakes in online monolingual dictionaries. For certain languages such
as French and Spanish, I think it's pretty good. It's also normally easier to find a
decent bilingual dictionary, at least online, if your native language is
widely spoken. If only a few million people speak your native language,
it might be more difficult. In that case, it could be a good idea to use a
monolingual dictionary as soon as your language skills are good enough.
So don't worry about the dictionary you are using. Normally when we look up a word in a
dictionary, we don't look at it for very long, so it's not going to stop you from
thinking in English. Or if it does, it won't be for very long. And you don't
need to be thinking in English a hundred percent of the time to be able to
understand it and speak it well. Honestly, the type of dictionary that you use is
not going to make a big difference. Remember that there's more than one way
to learn a language. If you watch videos on YouTube made by polyglots, you will
see that they all have different methods. So in conclusion, use whichever
dictionaries suit you. Just make sure you use them well.
Thanks for watching, guys. I'll see you next time!
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