Make intensive use of online dictionaries when reading texts and dur­ing learning new words. In word translation result lists, vo­cabu­lary and phra­ses are usually presented within various contexts. By clicking on the ac­com­pa­nying loudspeaker symbol you memorize the native sound pattern, including the correct intonation. Some web­sites show the pronunciation also in written form, in the so called IPA-notation. Thereby you memorize new words twice, acous­tic and visually.

The considered web dictionaries have a great performance ca­pa­bil­ity and a broad range of functions. Therefore, the possibilities and the se­lec­tion-​menus are always described only rudimentarily. At the beginning, pass through all functions, categories and sub-sites for finding the category groups relevant for you, and for taking the big­gest possible advantage of the offered contents. Provide yourself overviews!:

Study the link lists of Le­xi­lo­gos. There are offered online dictionaries to more than 108 lan­guages, numerous dictionaries to each respectiv one. They also can be accessed directly via a search mask. Moreover, this site offers comprehensive link lists on free downloadable dic­tio­nar­ies, on grammar text books as well as on further language learning materials.

Read the section on online dictionaries of Om­ni­glot, one of the most comprehensive and most substantial language sites in the Internet.

Similarsites.com also comes up with numerous presorted creme-de-la-creme-link-lists on the theme language: There, when you enter the address of a website, all related sites known by the search index are put together and presented in a list (WP-​ar­ti­kel “Web­site cor­re­lation”); for the menu guidance 18 resp. 19 languages are at choice. The search results are differently pres­ented by Similarsites.com and by Similarsitesearch.com. Here are three search requests for three language relevant websites: dict.cc, Linguee.com and Reverso.net.

Further dictionaries can be found in “Wi­ki­pe­dia:​Nach­schla­ge­wer­ke im In­ter­net/Wör­ter­bü­cher” (Wiki­pe­dia:Reference Works in the Internet/Dictionaries), in “Wi­ki­pe­dia:​Nach­schla­ge­wer­ke im In­ter­net/Kosten­lo­se Über­set­zungs­dien­ste“ (Wikipedia:Reference Works in the Internet/free Trans­la­tion services) as well as in the WP-​overviews “Ca­te­go­ry:​On­line dic­tio­na­ries” and “Ka­te­go­rie:​On­line­wör­ter­buch”.

Short definitions on various dictionary-relevant terms, definition extracts are taken from the linked WP-sources: “[...] A synonym is a word or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word or phrase in the same language. [...], “[...] Complementary antonyms are word pairs whose mean­ings are opposite [...]”.

“Etymology [...] is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time. [...] By extension, the term ‘the etymology (of a word)’ means the origin of the particular word. [...]”

A Definition for “thesaurus” (plural: thesauri): “[...] In general usage, a thesaurus is a ref­er­ence work that lists words grouped together according to similarity of meaning (containing synonyms and sometimes antonyms), in contrast to a dictionary, which provides definitions for words, and generally lists them in alphabetical order. The main purpose of such reference works is to help the user ‘to find the word, or words, by which [an] idea may be most fitly and aptly expressed’ – to quote Peter Mark Roget, architect of the best known thesaurus in the English language. [...]” Word definitions at Wik­ti­o­nary and at Merriam-Webster.

The overview article “Free Typesetting Software for the Professional Document Preparation” also discusses language-specific aspects on the text input.

BEOLINGUS offers comprehensive dictionaries of the TU-​Chem­nitz, with phonetic transcription and with audio files recorded by humans. Offered languages are: German ↔ Eng­lish, German ↔ Spanish, German ↔ Portuguese.

Via a filter you can encircle the accuracy and switch on and off the phonetic transcription. Over the preferences and usage tips category all criteria can be determined centrally, even vulgar words can be shown (“Show also vulgar and slang words”).

The „Help“-category contains detailed usage hints, in the Word lists for special subjects you find dictionaries on numerous life- and professional areas. On the Conversions of Units-site, units of the Anglosphere can be converted into metric units. Further categories contain aids on grammar.

Concerning the comprehensive usage possibilities, BEOLINGUS has an exceptional position among the dictionaries, more information on this in the FAQ category; also browser extensions as well as dictionaries for the offline modus are freely available. Excerpt of the German WP-article „Beolingus“ (October 01, 2016), translated:

“[...] Beolingus offers over 900.000 word translations, explanations, synonyms, sayings, aphorisms and quotations. It thereby is one of the three biggest German-English dictionaries, besides dict.cc and LEO. German as well as American pronunciation by native speakers can be listened to. In addition it also offers translations into Spanish and Portuguese. [...]”

Original text: “[...] Be­o­lin­gus bie­tet über 900.000 Wort­ü­ber­set­zun­gen, Er­klä­run­gen, Sy­no­ny­me, Sprüche, Apho­ris­men und Zi­ta­te. Es ge­hört da­mit ne­ben dict.cc und LEO zu den drei größ­ten Deutsch-​Eng­lisch-​Wör­ter­bü­chern. Deut­sche so­wie ame­ri­ka­ni­sche Aus­spra­che durch Mut­ter­sprach­ler kann an­ge­hört wer­den. Da­ne­ben bie­tet es auch Über­set­zun­gen ins Spa­ni­sche und Por­tu­gie­si­sche. [...]”

BEOLINGUS: Offered Menu Languages (User Interface)

German

English

Spanish

Odge.info, the „online dictionary German-English“, presents itself with a clas­sic, simple and appealing created user interface, which is available in En­glish and in German. Vocabulary extensions can be suggested via the cat­e­go­ry Enter new word. The license is GPL-based, more information here­to in the “License-information”.

Odge.info draws on a vocabulary grown during decades, which has been extended con­tin­u­ous­ly since 2004. Example translation queries: instantly, refined. Some search results are fil­ing pages, therefore it is advisable to page down to the bottom.

Linguee consists of a classic dictionary and a context based translation system which bases on human translations. It shows you, how others have translated your text (word, phrase resp. fragment as well as full sentences) in various frames of reference (contexts). The basis is an ongoing updated database of high-quality translations, that is texts translated by hu­mans, among bilingual held websites from the Internet. During trans­la­tion queries, numerous translation situations from everyday life are considered. Example query (EN ↔ DE): continous im­prove­ment; this results in a primarily suggested translation compared to “less common” resp. less frequent phrases, as well as in an “Examples” and a “See also” column followed by “Ex­ter­nal sources [...]” listing numerous translations in context. Users have the possibility to par­tic­i­pate, whereby a continuous improvement of the database takes place.

The audio recordings of the dictionary are recorded by na­tive speakers and are, in case of very differently pro­nounced words, callable in American English as well as in British English. Example translation queries for words, whose pronunciation in General American differs dis­tinc­tive­ly from British English: ask, answer, adver­tisement.

Further information can be found in the self description of Linguee as well as in the WP-​article “Linguee”. Linguee provides excellent services since 2009. Com­pa­ra­ble context based dictionaries: Linguatools, Reverso Context.

Linguee: Offered Menu Languages (User Interface)

English (language directions)	German (language directions)	French (language directions)
Spanish (language directions)	Chinese (language directions)	Russian (language directions)
Japanese (language directions)	Portuguese (language directions)	Italian (language directions)
Dutch (language directions)	Polish (language directions)	Schwedish (language directions)
Danish (language directions)	Finnish (language directions)	Greek (language directions)
Czech (language directions)	Romanian (language directions)	Hungarian (language directions)
Slovak (language directions)	Bulgarian (language directions)	Slovenian (language directions)
Lithuanian (language directions)	Latvian (language directions)	Maltese (language directions)

Linguatools.de offers powerful context dictionaries with auto com­ple­tion suggestions during the input. So far, the user interface is only available in German. However, to use it you don't need to know any German, besides these headings: „Über­set­zun­gen“ = translations; „Ver­wen­dungs­bei­spie­le“ = usage examples; „Com­pu­ter­ge­ne­rier­te Über­set­zungs­vor­schlä­ge“ = com­put­er generated translation suggestions.

Extract of the self description (May 18, 2017): „Context Dictionary[:] The Context Dictionary translates between German and ten European languages. It provides millions of bilingual example sentences for each language pair that show you how words and phrases are actually used in real world contexts.“ The dictionaries are also accessible under linguatools.com. Example translation query: in my opin­ion, background knowledge.

The Lin­gu­a­tools context dictionary, web present since 2009 (German article on the open­ing), is a matured language system which provides excellent services. Detailed information can be found in the column “Über das Kon­text-​Wör­ter­buch”. Recommendations for refined search queries de­scribes the blog entry „Mit Fil­tern Tref­fer ge­zielt ein­schrän­ken“. Further In­for­ma­tion: „Neu­es Design und neue Da­ten für das Kon­text-​Wör­ter­buch Deutsch-​Eng­lisch“, „Com­pu­ter­ge­ne­rier­te Über­set­zungs­vor­schlä­ge Deutsch-​Eng­lisch“, „Au­to­ma­ti­sche Wör­ter­buch­er­wei­te­rung“.

The founders of Lin­gu­a­tools, Pe­ter Kolb and Pet­ra Pro­chaz­kova come from the field of com­pu­ta­tio­nal linguistics (WP-article “Computational linguistics”). Articles in German: “Über uns” (research activities and staff) • lin­gu­a­tools-​Blog • linguatools.com • Englisch website, lin­gu­a­tools.org • Pet­ra Pro­chaz­kova's blog on the Czech language, Tschechisch-Blog.

Linguatools: Offered Language Dircections

German ↔ English	German ↔ French	German ↔ Spanish
German ↔ Schwedish	German ↔ Dutch	German ↔ Portuguese
German ↔ Greek	German ↔ Italian	German ↔ Czech
German ↔ Polish

PONS, “PONS - The free dictionary for foreign languages, German spelling and full-text trans­la­tions”, offers dictionaries on more than a dozen languages, with phonetic transcription and com­put­er generated audio recordings as well as a translation system.

The pronunciation (loud speaker symbol) and the corresponding phonetic transcription for Brit­ish Eng­lish and for American Eng­lish are listed at PONS in parallel. Example words: ask, an­swer. When you roll with the mouse pointer over the phonetic transcription, to each single IPA symbol are example words displayed, in which the respective sound occurs. Call up already known words and memorize their written sound pattern, thus you quickly become familiar with the phonetic symbols.

Important for the preparation of English texts: The syl­la­bles' interspaces are displayed. This is very ad­van­ta­geous, as the syllabification of the English languages does not follow comparable easy rules like with Ger­man. One should note, that the syllabification patterns partly vary with­in the Anglosphere. [1] [2] [3] [4].

Within the header line of the considered word entry is a small information-​i. Press on it, to get displayed fur­ther options, inter alia PONS' syno­nyms; if you choose “Links to further information”, a menu with 16 dic­tion­aries resp. language rele­vant websites appears. Click on the respective entry for forwarding directly your word query to the particular dictionary.

To the words, example sentences are callable, edi­to­rial­ly verified as well as unaudited from the Internet. Note the tabs and the pop-up menus, scroll down to the page bottom to provide an overview. Information on the publisher can be found in the German WP-​ar­ti­cle “Pons-​Ver­lag”.

The PONS publishing house looks back on decades of history, PONS-Online exists since 2001.

[1] “Canadian, British and American Spelling [,] General Rules for Regional Differences”

[2] “American and British English spelling differences”

[3] WP-article “Syllabification”

[4] WP-article “Phonetics”

PONS: Offered Menu Languages (User Interface)

German	English	French	Russian	Spanish	Portuguese
Italian	Slovak	Greek	Turkish	Polish	Chinese

PONS-Online-Dictionary: English ↔ Other Language
(there are numerous further Language Directions)

English ↔ German	English ↔ French	English ↔ Russian
English ↔ Italian	English ↔ Chinese	English ↔ Portuguese
English ↔ Spanish	English ↔ Slovenian	English ↔ Arabic
English ↔ Polish

Reverso offers powerfull dictionaries, various grammar aids as well as a context based phrase translation system Reverso Context, comparable with Linguee. The dictionaries com­prise in total 14 languages. Users can participate in, what is conducive for the quality con­trol.

In-depth information are to be found in Reverso's self description, inter alia in “About the contextual dictionary” (also contains operating instructions), in “What is Re­ver­so all about?” as well as in the WP-​article “Re­ver­so (logiciel)”.

The menu navigation of Re­ver­so Con­text, the pow­er­ful context based dictionary, is available in 12 lan­guages: In German, English, French, Spanish, Por­tu­guese, Russian, Dutch, Italian, Polish, Arabic and in He­brew. Example translation queries for the direction Ger­man ↔ English: “in my opinion”, “under the cir­cum­stances”. Already during the input the auto com­ple­tion lists known words resp. word combinations and say­ings as input translations. The results are pres­ented grouped.

When pointing on the single light blue highlighted areas, an information display shows the total number of the respective example translations, by pressing they are listed then.

Directly below, in a subset and in form of a “German ↔ Englisch”-comparison, a subset of the results is shown. When hovering with the mouse pointer in the re­spec­tive line, it will be highlighted in color and symbols for various functions appear, including the loudspeaker sym­bol: Press on it to play the pronunciation (computer generated pronunciation). Hover on the respective symbol for let­ting show you the associated function.

To the right of the search mask is a book symbol. By clicking, the request is forwarded to the clas­sic Reverso dictionary. This comprises 14 languages, the menu navigation is available in total in 6 languages: German, English, French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese.

Re­ver­so Conjugation conjugates verbs of the languages German, English, French, Spanish, Heb­rew. The menu navigation is offered in German, English, French, Spanish, and in Italian.

The Re­ver­so Online spellchecker is available in English and French, whereby settings for Ameri­can English and British English can be configured. Available menu languages are: Eng­lisch, French and Spanish.

Re­ver­so Grammar offers grammar verifications for the languages English and French. The menu navigation is available in English and in French.

Re­ver­so Translation machine translation:

Reverso Translation: Offered Menu Languages (User Interface)

German	English	French	Spanish	Portuguese
Russian	Italian	Czech	Japanese	Romanian

Reverso Translate: Translation Directions

English ↔ German	German ↔ English	French ↔ German	German ↔ French
German ↔ Spanish	Spanish ↔ German	Russian ↔ German	German ↔ Russian
Portuguese ↔ German	German ↔ Portuguese	English ↔ Spanish	Spanish ↔ English
English ↔ Russian	Russian ↔ English	English ↔ Portuguese	Portuguese ↔ English
English ↔ Hebrew	Hebrew ↔ English

LEO belongs to the oldest online dictionaries in the German-speak­ing area. The word accompanying audio files were and are re­cord­ed by native speakers. Via the information-i you can for­ward your query to other on­line dictionaries, among others to the “On­line Ety­mo­lo­gy Dic­ti­o­na­ry”, which lists information on the word ori­gin. Examples: Translation query to “answer”, results on etymonline.com, online dictionary en­try at Merriam-Webster.com. Pay attention to the loudspeaker symbol of other online dic­tion­aries, which is sometimes illustrated very small.

LEO offers various user guides to the single page functions, inter alia on the online dictionary func­tion (in total more than 11 pages). LEO offers also a comprehensive link list to other lan­guage relevant websites: “Useful links”. Information on the history of LEO-​project can be found in the WP-​article “LEO (website)”; the origins of LEO date back to the beginning of the 1990ies. Example translation query: interested.

LEO: Offered Menu Languages (User Interface)
for the Direction German ↔ [other Language]

Deutsch	English	French	Russian	Spanish	Portuguese
Italian	Polish	Chinese

The very comprehensive online dictionary dict.cc offers, besides the English-German dictionary support for dozens of further languages. Almost all entries are provided with audio files re­cord­ed by native speakers. Users can take part in the extension of the vo­cabu­lary and of the phrases, and they can make improvement proposals.

Besides lists of technical vocabulary, the entire vocabulary data base can be downloaded. Such a pure text file is, even without dictionary search mask, very effective for the offline operation. Directly below the search field the “Options” for the output of the search re­sults can be set.

Extensive information can be found in the self-description of dict.cc, under “About/​Ex­tras”, in the WP-article “dict.cc” and in the columns “FAQ”, “Tips”, and “Downloads”.

An application example: Translate the word typewriter into German. Already dur­ing typing, proposals are sub­mit­ted via auto­com­ple­tion what is useful if you do not remember the correct spell­ing.

In the right column now is the German re­sult, “Schreibmaschine”, followed by further relevant words (compound nouns, associated verbs etc.). When clicking with the left mouse button on the word, the result list is presented dif­fer­ent­ly. Pressing the right mouse button opens a menu for the vocabulary trainer, also show­ing further functions.

When using a dictionary for the first time, always go down to the very bottom of the tail edge, for getting to know all functions and additional options.

Press on the loudspeaker symbol at the right of the respective word entrance, for listening to the pro­nun­cia­tion. By default, the re­cord­ing of a na­tive-​speaker is played back; if this should not be available you hear a computer generated pro­nun­cia­tion. Simultaneously a window opens in which you can choose be­tween the available recordings. Over this menu you also can call up in­for­ma­tion on the language background of the speakers (press the profile name) as well as over the recording istself (“info”). Note, that on numerous menus and functions descriptions and ad­di­tio­nal in­for­ma­tion appear after a short waiting moment, when moving the mouse pointer on it (WP-​ar­ti­cle “Tool­tip”), for example, in this sentence at the last word.

At the right of the loudspeaker symbol is an information symbol, a small i. By pressing with the left mouse button a menu window opens, the default function is the “Voice Out­put”. For in­stance, alternatively let show yourself the entrance of one of the more than a dozen further on­line dictionaries: 1. Select “PONS”, whereby in a separate tab (“Tab (GUI)”) the entrance of PONS.com for “Schreibmaschine” appears. 2. At PONS you also can listen to the pronunciation. Moreover, there it also is shown in IPA-​phonetic-​tran­script­ion. The pronunciation (loudspeaker sym­bol) and the respective phonetic tran­script­ion for British English and for American English are listed in parallel at PONS. Example words: ask, answer.

PONS also shows the separation lines of the syllables. However, there can be differences in the hy­phena­tion of the syllables within the written English Language, depending on the country (Brit­ain, U.S.A., Canda and others).

Now, In place of a loudespeaker symbol, at dict.cc always the symbol of the last called func­tion appears, in this case a “P” for “PONS”. By calling the “Voice Output”-function from anew, the de­fault “Voice Output”-preference is restored.

Some dict.cc-dictionaries are still under construction. Nevertheless for the sake of com­plete­ness, most of them are listed here. The language of the activated dictionary is also indicated via a flag symbol in the Favicon of the tab, except for English.

dict.cc: Offered Menu Languages (User Interface)

English

German

dict.cc-Dictionaries. English ↔ Other Languages.

English ↔ German	English ↔ French	English ↔ Spanish
English ↔ Portuguese	English ↔ Russian	English ↔ Hungarian
English ↔ Serbian	English ↔ Croatian	English ↔ Slovakian
English ↔ Dutch	English ↔ Schwedish	English ↔ Norwegian
English ↔ Danish	English ↔ Finnish	English ↔ Icelandic
English ↔ Romanian	English ↔ Bulgarian	English ↔ Italian
English ↔ Greek	English ↔ Polish	English ↔ Czech
English ↔ Turkish	English ↔ Bosnian	English ↔ Albanian
English ↔ Latin	English ↔ Esperanto

dict.cc-Dictionaries: German ↔ Other Language.

German ↔ English	German ↔ French	German ↔ Spanish
German ↔ Portuguese	German ↔ Russian	German ↔ Hungarian
German ↔ Serbian	German ↔ Croatian	German ↔ Slovakian
German ↔ Dutch	German ↔ Schwedish	German ↔ Norwegian
German ↔ Danish	German ↔ Finnish	German ↔ Icelandic
German ↔ Romanian	German ↔ Bulgarian	German ↔ Italian
German ↔ Greek	German ↔ Polish	German ↔ Czech
German ↔ Turkish	German ↔ Bosnian	German ↔ Albanian
German ↔ Latin	German ↔ Esperanto

The rich in tradition Publisher Lan­gen­scheidt (WP-​article) offers a comprehensive online dictionary with (presumably computer generated) audio files as well as a synonym rubric.

Example translation query for the direction German → Eng­lish: hin­ter­fra­gen.

Langenscheidt: Offered Menu Languages
User Interface, language menu there at the top-right

English

German

Spanish

French

Italian

Langenscheidt-Dictionaries: German ↔ Other Language.

German ↔ English	German ↔ French	German ↔ Spanish
German ↔ Portuguese	German ↔ Italian	German ↔ Dutch
German ↔ Russian	German ↔ Greek	German ↔ Danish
German ↔ Schwedish	German ↔ Czech	German ↔ Arabic
German ↔ Persian;

Woxikon offers dictionaries to 22 languages, as well as a mighty synonym dictionary on the Ger­man Language and on other languages; users can participate. Moreover, there are fur­ther useful language categories. By pointing on the loudspeaker symbol, the pronunciation of a word, recorded by native speakers, is automatically played (not yet accessible for all words). Example translation query for German ↔ English: mind, synonyms for mind, ex­cel­lent.