I truly loathe trying to locate the definition of a word that I've come across in my current novel and it's unavailable!! It then becomes a quest to locate the true definition, if not the etymological origins, of a particular word. Being someone who loves and collects words, the OED is the perfect resource for someone like me! So, what do I say?
The dictionary is superior. Caveat emptor. You cannot pay once and use the app on both an iPad and an iPhone. I have changed the rating to 4 stars, because there is still some trouble getting the app to restore purchases on additional devices.
It required deleting the unresponsive download and a new download and installation. Also, to be fair, the developer did respond to my original derogatory review by email, which sat unread on an unused server for six weeks.
Their instructions for restoration, clearly well-intended, were not helpful. I had to fiddle further on my own. On the basis of the app itself and the product, this deserves a 5-star rating. I misjudged initially. There is no deception. Granted, I acknowledge the disclaimer that the word on every given day is randomly generated.
The problem as I see it is simply, if you will, that the words are too simple. As such, the feature is uninformative at best and, unless one shuts down the notifications entirely, a nuisance.
The distinguished OED should expand the mind and the vocabulary of the educated user, not cater to popularity in pursuing the least common denominator among the crowd. The pronunciation texts are represented with their non-phonemic pronunciation respellings, in which words are shown according to the ordinary spelling rules of English Fraser, These transcriptions are enclosed in a rectangular border Figure 4.
Unlike the phonetic transcriptions of the definition entry, the transcriptions in the pronunciation entry do not follow the symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet IPA , and, as mentioned above, are shown with their non-phonemic respellings, in which words are represented without the attempt to give one unique symbol for each sound Fraser, The transcriptions of the pronunciation are syllabicated, for the sake of clarity Figure 4.
One interesting feature in this specific entry is the clear indication of the stressed syllables in bold type. Although the strongest, or primary, stress is indicated by a bold mark, the intermediate, or secondary, level of stress is not specified.
After the user chooses either British English or American English pronunciation to learn the vocabulary see Figure 6 , he or she only needs to press the speaker icon to hear the pronunciation. Although seeing mouth movement while a word is pronounced helps to understand the pronunciation, the authenticity of the animated mouth and lip movement model could be questioned.
The final feature is the option that allows Google to gain feedback from the users about the correctness or helpfulness of the pronunciations encompassed in the dictionary, including disclosing possible flaws in both audial and textual pronunciations or approving the usefulness of the pronunciations by the users. This feedback entry also enables users to express any other comments or suggestions see Figure There could also be an adverse psychological effect of this feature on the users by giving a sense that not all the pronunciations presented by the dictionary are correct; therefore, they may struggle to trust both textual and audial pronunciations.
While Google Dictionary might not be considered an official dictionary app, it is a free, web-based, useful tool that enables users to look up a great number of words, check their pronunciations, and so forth.
Using either voice or text command, one can simply ask Google the pronunciation or definition of any given word. It is a good option for those who do not need a full-fledged dictionary app but still want to know the pronunciation, definition, or any other information of different lexicon.
This newly added pronunciation feature can help users learn pronunciation more accurately by showing them a rather precise articulation of words using visemes for pronunciations and syllabicated descriptions. Likewise, Hmadan and Al-Hawamdeh found out that the inclusion of a face i. As mentioned earlier, despite the fact that not all the word entries contain the newly added audio-pronunciation entry, it seems a standout feature that could be helpful to users working on improving their pronunciation accuracy.
To provide a brief evaluation on the advantages and disadvantages of the characteristics of the aforementioned features, the following criteria, which were applied by Szynalski in his dictionary reviews, could be used to examine Google Dictionary:.
Accuracy and completeness of phonetic transcriptions. Google Dictionary does not list all common pronunciations of a word in either British English or American English accent in one entry, although the first pronunciation listed is the one most frequently heard among educated native speakers.
According to Levis , accents are not a characteristic of native speakers of English but also of English users around the world.
English accents are varied; there is no American English accent, for example, but rather many American English accents. The same holds true elsewhere. Native accents in other inner-circle countries e. British English and American English are only two of the many individual varieties of the language that share a common lexical core but develop their own unique vocabularies.
How do we create our dictionaries? At Oxford Languages, we are committed to an evidence-based approach to creating dictionaries in order to provide the most accurate picture of a language. The evidence we use to create our English dictionaries comes from real-life examples of spoken and written language, gathered through a series of corpora that continuously monitor language development.
The corpora, which collect these examples from a variety of language sources, are curated by the Oxford Languages team and enable us to analyse the ways words are used in context by people all around the world. The team uses this process to identify new words and senses as they come into use.
This evidence-based approach to creating a dictionary is known as descriptive lexicography. Our dictionaries aim to describe the way languages are and have been used by people around the world, rather than attempting to prescribe the way a language should be used.
We apply stringent quality checks to all dictionaries produced or acquired by our expert team so our users can feel confident in our ability to accurately and meaningfully represent their language.
Why do we include vulgar and offensive words in our dictionaries?
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