One World Dictionary 4+

I have been using this dictionary for a few months and it has proved to be a great resource for my French class. The app has Spanish, German and Italian but this review is based on my use of French.

The basic dictionary has a good size database, sufficient for first and second year students. The translations include French noun genders, type of word and most entries have a few meanings. The free version doesn’t have a lot of usage examples but you can upgrade to comprehensive version from within the app or $10. Verbs are conjugated in all tenses like in one of those 601 verb books. Once the dictionary is installed you can lookup words from Safari with ctrl-click. I like using this when reading Le Monde online.

This update has a phrasebook with categories for traveling, customs, hotels, etc. There is a category called My Phrases to let you add your own. The button to add phrases is hard to find, check upper right of screen. All the phrases, including your own can be searched by keyword. An extended phrasebook is also offered as addon.

You can listen to dictionary words and phrases using text 2 speech. You’ll need to download the French voice if it’s not already installed on you Mac. I would like to see phonetic pronunciation in the future for when I'm in the library and don't have my headphones.

Overall, I’ve found One World Dictionary to be very useful for learning French.

I have this dictionary on both my computer and my iPhone. I use it a lot since I am a beginning French speaker. But cross-links that take me to the french side from a definition on the english side would be very useful, especially for the verbs. That way when I want to find the french verb for "to come" I see that it is "venir". Now I have to search for "venir" to get the conjugation. A pain. It is not well thought out for the user in mind. Also, I have found many instances where a french word is given from the english side, but when I want to see the conjugation, I type it in and it is not on the french side. For instance search for french verbs for "to forget". You get "omettre". Now I want to see the conjugation of "omettre", only to find "omettre" is not in the french dictionary. I find this too often. I do like that the verb conjugations are given for the french verbs. I have not shopped around for other french english dictionary apps, so for now I am stuck wiht this one. I must say that I do use it a lot though.

I've been using this app while studying spanish and have found it very useful. I love the fact that it has not only present tense conjegations but also past and future tenses as well. I would have given it 5 stars, but not all verbs have the conjugations listed. For instance, the listing for spanish verb "andar" lists the definition, but not the conjugations. There are a few others that I have come across as well. Great app for the price.