I bought this book hoping it would be yet another dictionary of German synonyms for native speakers of English similar to the classic "Dictionary of German Synonyms" by B.K. Farrell and Beaton's more recent "A Practical Dictionary of German Usage". This book is not nearly as good as those works however.



Unlike Farrell or Beaton, "Using German Synonyms" suffers in that it indexes groups of synonyms by a German keyword. I doubt that many non-native speakers of German will find this easy to use. There is also very little explanatory information in English: most of the text consists of groups of synonyms with brief definitions in English and sample sentences in German. There really isn't much here for the native English-speaker that is different from a German thesaurus. What the Farrell and Beaton books have that I find so interesting and informative are detailed explanations in English describing the use of different words in German that basically mean the same thing in English.



I did like the classification of words by different "registers": words that are only used in spoken speech or written German or literary or business German are identified as such. Offensive terms are also identified. Most readers of this book will probably quickly peruse it looking for swear words. I found it interesting that the term "Weib" used to be a "fine literature" term for "wife" but is now only used as a pejorative in spoken German. I did not know that.



There is some interesting information here, but it is hard to use. I recommend this book for libraries supporting advanced students in German Language as a reference work but it is not something that I suggest many individuals should purchase for their personal collections.



Edit: additional note: I have just received Durrell's more recent book "Using German: A Guide to Contemporary Usage" which appears to be really excellent, incorporating the interesting bits from this book in a more useful format.

Скачать книгу бесплатно (pdf, 3.69 Mb)

---

Читать «Using German Synonyms»