Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin

I agree with Ryan R. Grant's review below. It will be easier to use by someone with some familiarity with Latin. On the positive side, it is sturdily bound and neatly formatted with clear print on eye-ease paper--very convenient to use. But one thing that no one has mentioned so far is the accents. Following the practice of ecclesiastical latin, this dictionary uses acute accents to indicate the stressed syllable of each Latin word. This will be a minor annoyance for the user who tries to determine the stress on some verb forms. For example, the present tense of the verb "invénio" appears with the stress on the "e"; But there is no indication of how to determine where the stress falls on the second-person and third-person forms of that verb. On the other hand, in a classical dictionary where long vowels are marked by macrons; the lack of a macron written over the "e" in the verb "invenio" conveniently indicates that the "e" is short and that the stress must recede to the first syllable on those forms "ínvenis" and "ínvenit." Ultimately, the user of this dictionary will need to refer to a classical dictionary for this information.A minor inconvenience is that I-stem nouns are not marked. There are about fifty of them in use; and although they can now be found on line with a little digging; it would have been convenient to have I-stem nouns indicated in this dictionary.A third inconvenience is the lack of information regarding the valence of verbs. Not all Latin verbs take accusative objects. Some verbs take dative objects, and other verbs take genitive or ablative objects. This is important information, and in order to find it, a reader must search in a second dictionary.

I bought this book in order that I might find explanations of common expressions in Latin, which litter modern writing in theology, law, and medicine. I was disappointed. The first time I looked something up, it simply was not there, because it was an idiomatic usage, and not formal grammatical Latin. I have bought other dictionaries of specialized dialects of languages, such as a dictionary of Homeric (heroic) Greek, which is necessary if you have any intention of reading The Iliad in Greek. Probably because I studied Greek, but never studied Latin, the Greek dictionary did its job, but the Latin one did not. This Latin dictionary also lacks principle parts of verbs and a lot of other "conveniences" you may find in "full" lexicons. As other reviewers have noted, this is, indeed, a Lexicon, which means it only goes from Latin to English, but why you would want to go from English to medieval, rather than classical, Latin, I do not know.This is a book for translators of Anselm, Abelard, Ockham, and Aquinas. If you just need Latin phrases, look to the Oxford Dictionary of Latin Words and Phrases.

The entries in this dictionary do not indicate long and short vowels: no macrons. Syllable stress is indicated by diacritic marks.This may be the best or only Ecclesiastical dictionary on the market, but someone should write a new one with macrons. They are essential to pronunciation and syllable-emphasis understanding in Eccl. Latin education. By association, syllable emphasis decided the complex, beautiful inflectional system of Latin. And so macrons, whether disregarded or not, are essential to the presentation of the Latin language. Both this dictionary and TAN's "Latin Grammar" represent ignorance in language-acquisition by reducing Latin's rule-bound syllable-emphasis system based on a dual-vowel system to a mere diacritical mark above 'stressed vowel' which is to be memorized in a arbitrary manner. What ignorance. It's a real language!But what the TAN book lacks in grammatical explanation and pronunciation, it makes up in zeal and piety, something "Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin" lacks from the get-go. I'd rather memorize diacritics in ignorance than ponder the mistake of a Latin Rite seperated from Latin.

This is a reading aid rather than a research tool; it is perfect for quickly looking up words while reading but does not offer any extra linguistic information. The entries are concise, giving you the translation of the word without having to sort through extraneous data. No etymologies or examples are given, and vowels are not marked as long as short. This makes it extremely easy to read as the text is large and clear, while keeping the volume itself slim. The accents are marked, which makes the words instantly readable. Anyone with a basic knowledge of how Latin vowels and accents work should be able to look at the word and know how to pronounce it, despite the lack of vowel markings. The book is solidly built, if quite plain, with nice, heavier paper. This is all substance over style; after the three page preface then the rest is all definitions, with a short appendix at the end which explains some of the terms in more detail. Completely utilitarian, it is perfect as a quick reading aid.

I thought the product page was a little lacking so I have posted a few pictures from inside the book so that you can see what you are buying.It looks like a good dictionary to me.

This is a specialized work, and the student of classical Latin won't have much use for it. But it's very useful for reading the Vulgate, liturgical Latin, and in fact I find it my first look-up tool for much medieval Latin, since much medieval Latin which isn't strictly speaking ecclesiastical was nevertheless written by churchmen whose Latin was heavily influenced by ecclesiastical works. The book is physically well produced and priced more reasonably than such specialist works usually are. People who read much Latin of the sorts I've mentioned will find this book worth having.

Exactly what I needed to read religious books with mysterious (to me) Latin words.

The book was delivered promptly, which delighted me, for I was so excited by my other book purchase, a 17th Century Theological Treatise on Our Holy Mother, the contents were all in latin and my normal latin dictionary was of no use.I could not believe that one could get Ecclesiastical Latin Dictionaries from Amazon, Thank you Amazon.This means I can now interperate some of the Latin Verse in the book.Peter Fallon

Very good.

I love this dictionary it is helpful to use with the new testament i have purchased.

Love it ,thank you x

As described