One thing I am thankful for however, is my favorite online Russian-English dictionary, ABBYY Online. I was first turned on to this site when I was studying at Middlebury and had a ton of reading to do – what a time saver! One thing I really like about it is that there is no need to select which is the target language and which is the source language. If you type a word in English, it automatically gives you the Russian definition and vice versa. Some sites require you to choose the languages from a dropdown every time you look up a word, which is a pain. This feature makes it easy to copy a word from the Russian definition, and paste it in to get the English equivilant.

Like other online dictionaries, Lingvo includes an on-screen keyboard if you need to enter the search word in Russian. I also use this as shortcut (actually, it’s more of a longcut) for getting the Cyrillic alphabet when I’m not on my home computer.

Apparently ABBYY Lingvo also offers dictionaries and software for sale, but unfortunately for them, their online version is so great, I’ve never had the need to purchase anything! My guess is that the for-sale products are good, as well.

Has anyone found any other online dictionaries that you like? Please share!

It’s not very comprehensive, so it’s best for beginners. But I don’t consider myself a beginner and I use it all the time.  For every entry, there is a short definition, followed by a few sentences so you can see the word in action! Even for advanced students this can be a lot easier than trying to make sense of phrases like “что на что кому чего” that are given in most dictionaries.

If you like the smell of used books as much as I do, pick up a copy for under $5.00 at Amazon.com. (New copies also available.)