The Concise Oxford Russian Dictionary

Very good as far as bilingual dictionaries go. Just regret that I should have got the larger ones. It has also good grammar tips.

Regarding the comment about the absence of the word "children" - I checked my copy and sure enough, the plural isn't listed under "child". However, a Russian user looking under the Russian word for children will find the English word "children". I believe the omission probably has to do with this being primarily oriented toward English-speaking users. Irregular plurals of Russian words do seem to be listed at the main entry, e.g. the plural (actually plurals) of the word for "child".

A friend gave me a copy of this dictionary and I use it mainly as a supplement to my main dictionary (Katzner's). The advantages of this one are that you are more likely to find a word such as an irregularly conjugated verb when you don't know the root. I still would like to see more cross-references in this regard.

The disadvantages of this dictionary are that there are no helpful tables for declension/conjugation as found in Katzner's. Also, Katzner's has a useful section on proper nouns (geographical and people's names), though the Oxford does list some proper names in the main section. And as someone else mentioned, there is no indication when a Russian word isn't pronounced as expected from the spelling (Katzner's does show the pronunciation in these cases).

I bought a copy of this dictionary for a Russian-speaking friend who is studying English, but as I mentioned it does seem to be primarily oriented toward English-speaking users and does have some limitations for Russian speakers. All the explanatory text, for example, is in English. But I think the main limitation is that all the clues for variations in meaning of a given word are in English, in both the English-Russian and Russian-English sections. It would probably be adequate for a Russian speaker in determining what an English word means, even when there are multiple meanings, as the correct Russian word could be deduced from the context. However, to determine how to translate a Russian word into English when there are several options to choose from would be difficult.

This is an excellent dictionary for students of Russian. It is well-organized, attractive, and I have to not find a word I need. However, it is pretty big. I wouldn't advise buying it as a travel ditionary.

Very comprehensive and an ideal companion to your Russian studies. It appears to have all I need in terms of vocabulary at a beginners/intermediate level, although it could contain more contemporary slang (important I feel when learning a language you will be exposed to on a daily basis)

It is though the heaviest book I carry around daily and sometimes I could wish for a lighter dictionary!

I have Oxford dictionaries in other languages and never found any problems with them. My Russian is not very good and perhaps that's why I notice some problems with this dictionary. It has some odd omissions. For instance, I tried looking up the Russian word for 'children' under the entry 'child' in the English-Russian section. The entry does NOT say that 'children' is the plural of child, in fact it doesn't mention the word 'children' anywhere. Nor does the entry include the Russian word for 'children.' And 'children' is not listed anywhere else in the English-Russian section. So some hapless Russian speaker using this dictionary would not learn that 'children' is the plural of 'child,' and would not be able to look up the word 'children' at all. Conversely, an English speaker would also not find the Russian word for 'children' by looking in the English-Russian section. Granted this may be an isolated example, but it does suggest that there may be some editing problems.

I also disliked the explanations in the front about the construction and meaning of dictionary entries. The explanations are a little too terse for those of us not well versed in Russian grammar. It would be nice to have at least a few examples written out in full. And as far as I could make out, a lot of the information about the Russian entries actually appeared under the discussion of English entries.

It would be nice to have a few more notes about pronunciation. As is, you would think that 'yevo' in Russian was pronounced 'yego' (as it is spelled) if all you had to go on was the information in the dictionary. Nor will you find information about consonants that aren't pronounced.

Other than that, the dictionary is nicely produced and well printed. It appears up-to-date, with lots of internet information. I am not able to make any intelligent comparisons of this dictionary with other Russian-English dictionaries. Although this seems to have a few shortcomings, it may well be a good choice for many readers.

One additional note: although another reviewer mentions conjugation tables, my copy of this dictionary has no grammatical tables of any kind (although they would have been useful).