Paiboon is a U.S.-based publisher, the company behind the Speak Like a Thai series, and the ... for Beginners series (Thai, Lao, Vietnamese, Cambodian), as well as several sequels for Thai (Thai for Intermediate Learners, Thai for Advanced Readers, etc.).
Like its previous incarnation, the new Paiboon dictionary is in three sections: English, Thai, and phonetic. This definitely stretches the limits of what can reasonably be called a "pocket" dictionary, since it weights in at 982 pages. But I'm told that it's always been a very good seller, and the inclusion of a phonetic section is probably a large part of the reason why.
The page on Paiboon's website gives these stats: 28,000 entries, 36,000 definitions, and 15,000 classifiers. That last stat means that for each noun entry, it also gives you the relevant classifier, a logical inclusion that is often left out.
There are also a few sample pages. One obvious change is that the phonetic section is now only a phonetic index. Since they've beefed up their word coverage and increased the font size, something had to go, and this was it.
Also, notice the little icons for each entry, telling you which register (level of speech) or each word belongs to: polite, slang, royal, monk, etc. It looks like there are also icons for jargon categories like medical, legal, etc.
Have a look at the sample pages from Paiboon's site:
I look forward to getting a closer look as soon as it's available.
No comments:
Post a Comment