Реферат: How to use dictionary

1. Introduction

2. Types of dictionaries and their content

3. Kinds of dictionaries:

3.1. general dictionaries;

3.2. special dictionaries:

3.2.1.bilingual dictionaries;

3.2.2.explanatory dictionaries;

3.2.3.etymological dictionaries;

3.2.4.dictionaries of synonyms;

3.2.5.phraseological dictionaries;

3.2.6.pronouncing dictionaries;

3.2.7.spelling dictionaries

4. How to use a dictionary. Dictionaries entries.

5. The encyclopedic material of some American dictionaries.

6. Conclusions

7. The list of literature.

Dictionaries are tools, and they are much more complicated, and capable of many more uses then we suspect. All of us know students need encouragement and guidance in the use of dictionaries. Some students are able to use their dictionaries with anything like efficiency. Certainly there must be very few of those who come up through the grades these days who are not familiar with the details of looking up words in dictionaries, but it is one thing to find a word in a dictionary and quite another to understand fully information there given about it. Linguists and lexicographers have a matter with dictionaries. Every linguist with an interest in the quantitative properties of language will on some occasion be faced with some form of the ultimate question in the word numbers game: ”How many words did Shakespeare use?”, “How many words are there in the English language?” “How many words should a dictionary have?” The first question, at least, has a definite although not simple answer: Shakespeare’s complete works consist of a total of 884647 words of text containing a grand total of 29066 different words including proper names. But on the question ”How many words should a dictionary have” it is very difficult to answer. Every dictionary has a different number of words. On the contrary lexicographers have a task to record the meanings of words, the task of arranging these meanings in the orderthey think will be of most help to those who use their work. Different editors solve this problem of arrangement in different ways. In the prefatory part of any dictionary you will find some indication of the plan that has been followed in arranging the meanings. In the Werriam-Webster dictionaries the meanings are arranged as far as possible, in the order in wich they arose. In those dictionaries, the first meanings given are the earliest a word is known to have had, and the more modern meanings come later. The arrangement of meanings is difficult, that’s why the only safe course is to examine the forematter of the dictionary to see what plan has been followed.

Dictionary is a book that contains a selected list of words arranged in alphabetical order. It explains their meanings and gives information about them. In a dictionary a person can look up a word quickly, discover what it means and learn how it is prononced.

Dictionaries give the meanings of many kinds of words. Most modern dictionaries describe the facts of a language as educated speakers and writers use it. They are called descriptive dictionaries because a dictionary editor does not change the facts of a language. Many older dictionaries tried to prescribe rules, some of wich did not agree with the way people commonly talked or wrote. These books are called prescriptive dictionaries. Most general dictionaries include:

1) the ordinary words of everyday life, such as bread, run and with;

2) literary words used as aggregation, despoil, incontrovertible;

3) thechnical word, such as starboard, gene and ratio;

4) words used chiefly on informal occasions, such as gap and wimp;

5) words used in writing to give an old-fashioned flavor, such as aweary and avaunt;

6) words not used today but found in the writtings of some authors, such as plaister for plaster;

7) words or phrases form other languages, such as coup d’etat from French, tofu from Japanese and barrio from Spanish.

8) Idioms, such as split hairs and unter the thumb of;

9) Abbreviations, such as U.S.A., Kans., and p.;

10)Important propernames, such as Buddha and Jupiter.

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