Pocket Burmese Dictionary: Burmese-English English-Burmese (Periplus Pocket Dictionaries) Paperback – December 15, 2008

Every since I started studying Burmese, I have been on the lookout for a solid "pocket" Burmese-English/English-Burmese dictionary to carry around instead of retreating to later lookup the words from the large dictionaries on my bookshelf. Alas, after finding several small dictionaries they were either inadequate, poorly organized or just plain too difficult to use. Nothing seemed to bridge the gap. And as much as I appreciate phrasebooks, their dictionaries in the back tend to be very limited.But this dictionary is exactly what I've been looking for! As a low-intermediate speaker of Burmese, I took this dictionary along on a recent trip to Myanmar and found it quite useful for day-to-day conversations. I was able to look up many words quickly and likewise when conversations came to a halt, some of my Burmese friends were able to find the word they were looking for and show it to me so I could understand.Is this dictionary perfect? No. Could it include some more words? Yes. But I loved it and found it quite helpful. And since the product only advertises itself as a pocket dictionary and not more, I give it five stars.

Like other reviewers, I think this dictionary is too limited in scope. I would have been happier with a dictionary that had many more words. This is better than some Burmese dictionaries that I've used (including the very limited one by Lonely Planet), so I don't feel like complaining too much, but it frustrates me when I want ot look up a fairly common word and it's nowhere to be found. If you're a learner like me, you end up buying 4 or 5 different dictionaries in order to form a basic vocabulary.One thing I found unnecessary was the first half of the book; the Burmese-English section that lists transliterated versions of the words in alphabetical order by the "sound" of the word. Maybe some learners like having this to use as an option, but I rarely look at that part of the book. Really, it's just a waste of space that they could have used to list more words. And some of the definitions in the English-Burmese section are defintely open to debate, such as telling you that "saga mya-de" is the phrase for "argue " Every Burmese that I show that to tells me that's not correct. But at least this book gives you proper tone markers (essential for correct pronunciation) and the transliteration system is the same as that one that most other Burmese courses use. All in all this is a very useful dictionary for beginners and the slim/thin size makes it easy to carry with you. Truly, a "pocket" dictionary. If you are looking for bigger, more complete Burmese dictionary, there is a much more comprehensive one (and much thicker) from Paiboon Publications.

I had a Burmese friend at work who speaks no english and I needed to find a way to communicate with him. I didn't even know this book existed so imagine my pleasant surprise when I found it. It reads like any other English-to-? dictionary as well as including some basic grammar rules for Burmese. Very very helpful. I actually bought two copies, one for myself and one for my friend.

This small book is very affordable and very useful for the Burmese Chin to learn English. Everyone in class can have one.

I really needed one with certain words and was glad it had them in this one, since other one I got had more of only tourist phrases.

I am a nurse who just recently began working with the Burmese population. While this book is limited, I speak no Burmese at all and so this is a great first step for me. I will still need to use an interpreter but I can make the patients feel more comfortable. I wish they would have added a few pages of key phrases.

Thank you for the fast order and reasonable price!

This is OK, but there's a lot more that can be done to improve it. Most Burmese words have more than one meaning depending on the context, and also on how it is combined with other words- the authors seem to have missed a large number of those alternative meanings of the words. Also, the casual and informal ending of the definitions in Burmese is a little disturbing- being that this is a dictionary, one would expect a more formal language. But this is a good start.