Cassell's German & English Dictionary

by Harold T. Betteridge

In taking care of daily conversational idioms and phrases, this "Cassell's German Dictionary" did not forget technical and professional terms. It is complete in every sense a dictionary in its class should be. Invaluable pronounciation guides featured in both English and German: thus making it a suitable learning tool for either an English native or a German one.
What makes this lexicon so endearing is the way it simplified all those complex verbs, which are notorious barriers for anyone learning German grammar. Also, with over 1200 pages, the listed price of this dictionary is very reasonable.
However, potential buyers may be greatly discouraged by the fact that this dictionary has not been updated since 1978. Except for antique-geeks, nobody would fancy buying a dictionary that is older than him or her.

Genres: Reference, Language, German Literature, Dictionaries

619 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1957

Reviews

[Manny]

Switzerland's quite amazingly multilingual, and every day I pick up some bizarre piece of useless information about language. I just have to pass on the following, which came up at lunch recently. We were talking about Mary Poppins, and it turned out that the French for "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" is, wait for it, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

But German is different! In that language, it's superkalifragilistischexpiallegetisch. So now you know too.

[Abigail · Rating 4 out of 5]

I invested in a copy of this German-English dictionary my freshman year of high school, and have never regretted it. The dust-jacket may be long gone, but the book itself has held up incredibly well over time (despite some rather hard usage). More to the point: it has always met all of my German vocabulary needs, and with its handy thumb-index, is easy to use.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is likely the second German-English lexicon I've owned, the first being in paper and used through college. Studying philosophy in graduate school demanded something better. This edition was found either in some used bookstore or at a library sale.

I actually studied German for a year--in second grade and at a small, rural elementary school! Then our young teacher married and, as was common in those days, left the profession, leaving Oak Ridge Elementary without a language teacher. We switched to Spanish, Spanish by public television, until my family moved to another town whose kids were well along in French. Never catching up, I put myself in Latin during high school.

German, however, was the foreign language which came up the most in my studies and which was required by the graduate programs I was most interested in. It also happened to be similar to Norwegian, my natal tongue--substantially forgotten when I moved back to the States aged three. Thus there was motivation to learn it, motivation which became necessity when I entered an M.A./Ph.D. program in philosophy at Loyola University Chicago.

So, using this book as a supplement to various "teach-yourself" texts, I studied German on my own in preparation for the exam. I hated it, my capacity for rote memorization being meagre and the genders of German nouns being counter-intuitive. Still, I got to the point of being able to understand simple essays in the language--an ability which immediately began to diminish once I discontinued the daily study.

Now, thanks to Google-Translate, I rarely refer to any lexicons. Indeed, the upstairs shelves being full, the lexicons and dictionaries are currently all shelved in the basement.

[Jann Cather · Rating 5 out of 5]

As bilingual dictionary, when are you ever finished? I used this text when I studied German in undergrad and in my doctoral language exams. I gave the book away a few years ago, thinking I would never be interested in the language again to need a detailed dictionary. Yet I have begun to study the writings of Rainer Marie Rilke in German, and compare various translations of Rilke's German text.
Hence, with the dictionary one is never 'finished', but one can say it is read.

[Bernie4444 · Rating 5 out of 5]

For fast, easy reference and comprehensive listings.

There are over 35,000 entries. That is just the right amount for a portable dictionary. This was originally used for a German class. Now I use it to interpret German subtitles in silent movies. There is a table in the back for "German Irregular verbs" and another for "English irregular verbs."

[Volsung]

Best German dictionary, in my opinion. Very good and thorough in terms of selection; pronunciations are given in IPA.

[AC · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best one volume German-English dictionary (in my opinion) for completeness and ease of use.