Product Description

Spanish accounts for more than half of all foreign language courses taught in American schools.

The Firefly Spanish/English Visual Dictionary shows graphically what other dictionaries can only describe in words. This new edition features updated terms and illustrations for the very latest common usages of both English and Spanish.

Each keyword or phrase is connected to a detailed and annotated full-color illustration, making identification quick and accurate. Spanish terms are identified by gender, and there are two extensive indexes, one English and another in Spanish, that make it quick and easy to find a term in either language.

The book covers 600 subjects that are organized into 17 color-coded sections:

• Astronomy
  
• Earth
  
• Vegetable kingdom
  
• Animal kingdom
  
• Human being
  
• Food and kitchen
  
• House
  
• Do-it-yourself and gardening
  
• Clothing
  
• Personal adornment and articles
  
• Arts and architecture
  
• Communications and office automation
  
• Transport and machinery
  
• Energy
  
• Science
  
• Society
  
• Sports and games

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #182810 in Books
• Published on:
• Original language: Spanish
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 1.70" h x 6.80" w x 8.60" l, 3.55 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 592 pages

Review
Illustrated with precise drawings in color, this excellent reference presents an encyclopedia of objects from the manmade and natural world with their names presented in English and Spanish. The parts of the objects are clearly identified in each drawing; readers learn all the parts of anatomy, for example, of humans, insects, and animals; or all the parts of Greek temples, Egyptian pyramids, and high-speed trains. The material is clearly organized by category.

About the Author

Jean-Claude Corbeil is a consultant and expert in linguistic planning with a worldwide reputation in the fields of comparative terminology and sociolinguistics.

Ariane Archambault is a specialist in applied linguistics who taught foreign languages before becoming a terminologist and editor of dictionaries.

Customer Reviews

Most helpful customer reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful.
a great tool
By M. Olson
If you are trying to learn Spanish, and not just enough to order a drink in Cancun, then this is a tool I would recommend. I have been studying this language for over seven years and I continue to learn every day. I have just completed a Spanish major at the university, which is no guarantee of fluency. I also lived in Mexico for over a year. Granted, these experiences have greatly improved my Spanish--but do not be fooled. A language is not learned in a few months, (a claim many language programs and books suggest on their covers).

One of the best examples I can think of that would illustrate what I am trying to say would be to ask someone learning Spanish if they can describe how to ride a bicycle in Spanish. This is not hard to do in a native language, but for a learner of a foreign language such a request is a true challenge. Someone like me who has read dozens of books in or about spanish still can't do it. This book has a detailed diagram of a bicycle and with its assistance I believe I could do it.

I feel strongly that in the United States foreign language instruction focuses too much attention on grammar and not nearly enough on vocabulary. Who cares if you can conjugate most verbs in the past subjunctive if you don't even know what the word for elbow is?

I enjoy looking at this book in my spare time. The pictures are lovely and clearly labeled in both Spanish and English. My girlfriend, who does not speak Spanish, even enjoys paging through the book and learing words in English that she does not know, such as the names for different types of hats. She is a doctor and she tells me that the anatomy section is very good.

One drawback of the book is that it uses formal names for things and not the common ones. This can result in an overly academic-sounding Spanish. But I suppose slang is beyond the scope of the book.

This is a book that I would recommend for people at any level of language learning.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful.
Great visual desk dictionary...
By B. Surkan
I am a teacher of Spanish and own a number of visual dictionaries, including the Firefly Five Language Dictionary, the Firefly Spanish/English Dictionary, the Firefly Mini Spanish/English Dictionary, and the DK Five Language Visual Dictionary. I prefer the Firefly dictionaries because they tactfully include the gender of words as a superscript after the word rather than as an indirect article, as in the DK dictionary. The latter has the ill-effect of creating ambiguous genders in instances where the indirect article is truncated:

For example: garlic - l'ail - der Knoblauch - el ajo - l'aglio

The size of this hardcover edition make it more appropriate for use as a desk dictionary rather than a pocket edition. It does not contain any more information than the Mini edition, but the Firefly Five Language Dictionary contains almost twice as many pages and words. Given that the image layouts used in all of the Firefly dictionaries are from a common master, the page count is a very good indication of the word count. Frankly, the quantity of the words in the hardcover edition is ample for even most advanced students of Spanish. And the absence of the extra three languages makes it less cluttered and confusing.

As with any visual dictionary, this one focuses on nouns. Students of the Spanish will still want to have a quality pocket bilingual dictionary like the Larousse:
Larousse Student Dictionary Spanish-English / English-Spanish (Larousse School Dictionary)

And a quality Spanish-only dictionary like the Dictionario Practico del Estudiante:
Diccionario Practico del Estudiante/ Student Dictionary

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent dictionary -- please note that it is Canadian
By camcas5
This is a superbly organized visual dictionary that is user-friendly and quite comprehensive. PLEASE NOTE -- and nowhere in the descriptions of the book is this mentioned -- that this is a Canadian publication, and this causes differences in vocabulary for terms used in France and other Francophone nations. Whether the omission of "feutre" as the word for a marker or the descriptions of lettuce or many other vocabulary cases, a significant number of these terms, and the items chosen (particularly for food), are NOT those that would be used or found correct in France. This is perfectly fine, of course, but it should be made clear.