English French dictionary & phrases

I have been using this dictionary for a few months and it has proved to be a great resource for my French class. The app has Spanish, German and Italian but this review is based on my use of French.

The basic dictionary has a good size database, sufficient for first and second year students. The translations include French noun genders, type of word and most entries have a few meanings. The free version doesn’t have a lot of usage examples but you can upgrade to comprehensive version from within the app or $10. Verbs are conjugated in all tenses like in one of those 601 verb books. Once the dictionary is installed you can lookup words from Safari with ctrl-click. I like using this when reading Le Monde online.

This update has a phrasebook with categories for traveling, customs, hotels, etc. There is a category called My Phrases to let you add your own. The button to add phrases is hard to find, check upper right of screen. All the phrases, including your own can be searched by keyword. An extended phrasebook is also offered as addon.

You can listen to dictionary words and phrases using text 2 speech. You’ll need to download the French voice if it’s not already installed on you Mac. I would like to see phonetic pronunciation in the future for when Im in the library and dont have my headphones.

Overall, I’ve found One World Dictionary to be very useful for learning French.

Briana Rollins about One World Dictionary