A review of the
|
The site was created by and is under the editorial control of Hans-Christian Holm. When I checked the site in January 2006, the website listed a total of 162 separate language dictionaries (everything from Apache to Zulu). These dictionaries together contain 2743 terms along with their corresponding English translation(s).
As with any other online dictionary reference, there are both some positives and negatives about the site. I'll start out with the negative (just to be able to end on a positive note).
The Bad
The site seems to have started out with very good intentions collecting user-submitted words along with their definitions and then posting them in the corresponding language dictionary. However, it seems that now there is no way for users to add updated terms. The FAQs promise an input method to be up and running, but the last update to the page seems to have happened a year and a half ago (June 2004), so I doubt that the input system will be up any time soon. There is, however, an email address on the site through which minor edits can be made, but I don't know if the email address is good.
Along with there not being an input system is the fact that slang changes rather quickly when compared to other types of language. Because there is no input system, there is no way to know how current the slang is that you're looking at. It might have been used five years ago, but it could mean something entirely different today. There is no way to know by just looking at the dictionary entries.
Another negative is that there are only 2743 terms for 162 separate languages. That comes out to an average of only about 17 words per language, which is not all that extensive. However, to be fair, the Alternative Spanish dictionary has just over 170 terms, while the Alternative Mexican Spanish section has a little under 140 terms.
A final criticism is that because the dictionary seems to have at one point been populated by user-submitted terms, there is some duplication of words and their definitions.
Enough of that. Now...
The Good
First of all, because the dictionary only deals with "bad language" the vocabulary is somewhat specialized (if you consider profanity and vulgarity to be a specialized topic). This is nice because you know exactly what kind of words and definitions will be in the dictionary.
Second, the layout is easy to navigate. You choose the language on the left-hand side of the homepage and after you get to the language dictionary you want, you click on a word and it goes right to a list of all the words in the dictionary (there can be multiple pages if there are numerous terms).
Another positive is that each definition contains useful information including the part of speech, the definition, and a notes section with different information, such as the literal meaning of the word, where the word is used, pronunciation, etc.
Finally, the editor has made .pdf documents available for each language dictionary. You can either download each individual dictionary or download all the dictionaries in one .pdf document of 131 pages.
The Rating
Overall, I give the Alternative Dictionaries site 2 out of 5 stars, just because it seems to have been pushed aside and is no longer maintained. However, I give the Alternative Spanish Dictionary 3 out of 5 stars because there is a decent collection of terms and definitions.