"Handwörterbuch" vs. "Wörterbuch"

[HarryT]

Can anyone help me with a German language question, please?

I've just bought a dictionary of the ancient Egyptian language which translates from Egyptian into German (all the best Egyptian dictionaries are published in German!). The title of the dictionary is:

Großes Handwörterbuch Ägyptisch - Deutsch (2800 bis 950 v. Chr.)

I know that this means something like "Big Dictionary Egyptian - German", but what is the difference in meaning between the word "Handwörterbuch" and "Wörterbuch", which I've always known as the usual German word for "Dictionary". My German dictionary doesn't have the word "Handwörterbuch" in it, and "Google Translate" doesn't know, either .

Can anyone help me understand the meaning of the word, please?

Thanks!

[ATDrake]

Google translate of the Wikipedia DE entry for Handwörterbuch seems to indicate that it's a "Concise Dictionary" with longer contributions and more specialized treatment of topics than the usual glossary/wordlist of a regular dictionary. Also sometimes just a "pocket dictionary".

Disclaimer: I do not actually read or speak German on a comprehensible level, so quite probably an actual native speaker would have a better explanation.

[HarryT]

Thank you . Your first explanation fits in very well with what it is. It's definitely not a pocket dictionary!

[Billi]

Yes, you're right that "Wörterbuch" is "dictionary".

And "Handwörterbuch" can have two meanings: like you two mentioned, a big, concise dictionary with longer explanations, and - joy of the German language - it is also used for the contrary, for a shorter dictionary, that you can put into your "Handtasche" - handbag. But with the word "großes" in the title it has the first meaning here (from Handbuch - compendium).

[HarryT]

Vielen dank, Billi .

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by Billi

And "Handwörterbuch" can have two meanings: like you two mentioned, a big, concise dictionary with longer explanations, and - joy of the German language - it is also used for the contrary, for a shorter dictionary

I disagree.

Even though some websites and dictionaries define a Handwörtbuch as a concise dictionary, IMHO, this is a mistranslation since many German dictionary publishers use this term for the dictionary with the most entries. These dictionaries are also occasionally referred to as Großwörterbuch [=large dictionary].

For example, if you look at the Langenscheidt dictionaries, the Spanish-German Handwörterbuch has 250000 entries, while the Spanish-German Taschenwörterbuch [=pocket dictionary] has only 130000 entries.

I.e., the German equivalent of a "concise dictionary" would be a Taschenwörterbuch [=pocket dictionary] or a Schülerwörterbuch [=student's dictionary].

[doubleshuffle]

Yep, Doitsu is correct. In practice, a Handwörterbuch is usually a comprehensive dictionary.

Although, to complete the confusion, the Duden Deutsches Universalwörterbuch refers Handwörterbuch to Handlexikon and defines the latter as "kleineres, handliches Lexikon" (a shorter, easily portable dictionary).

EDIT: And that's precisely what Billi said, as I see now. Only nobody uses it with the meaning defined in the Duden. One word, two contradictory meanings, utter confusion. Talk about German precision and order, eh?

[Freeshadow]

Exactly that is the reason I give a s* about how they're called and compare the given amounts of entries directly. (sad here is that the professionally usable big dictionaries are hopelessly outdated) so it's usually a hunt for a bunch of shorter single-field dictionaries.

[HarryT]

Thanks for all the information, everyone. It's greatly appreciated!

As a matter of interest, does the "Duden" try to define how the German language should be used, rather than reflect how it actually is used? The "Oxford English Dictionary" takes the opposite approach: it is compiled from "real world" examples of language usage, so its definitions are based on actual usage.

[doubleshuffle]

Well, nowadays "Duden" is mainly a publisher's trademark, and lots of dictionaries and reference books are published under it.

But what Germans mean when they refer to "Der Duden" is the first volume of the series of Duden dictionaries, Die deutsche Rechtschreibung (German Orthography), which indeed is a prescriptive dictionary, but only for spelling. It used to be the official, government-appointed standard for German orthography, but I don't think that applies anymore. There's a government commission now which discusses spelling rules and passes them on to the dictionary publishers.

The dictionary I quoted from, the Universalwörterbuch, is too short to be compared to the OED; it's just a simple one-volume dictionary, perhaps like the Concise OED or Collins, Merriam-Webster, etc. I'd have to read the introduction to tell how prescriptive it is intended to be. I should suppose it's compiled from a corpus, but their definition of "Handwörterbuch" makes me doubt that a little.

AFAIK, we don't really have anything that can be compared to the OED in German. The Deutsches Wörterbuch, started in 1852 by the Brothers Grimm of fairy tale fame, and finished in 1960, is the closest we have ever come. The problem of course being that it is seriously dated (especially the early volumes), but if you are looking for a strictly descriprive resource, with reference quotations just like in the OED, this is the place to go. It's actually online for free on a great website called woerterbuchnetz.de.

[HarryT]

Many thanks - that's very useful to know.

[Doitsu]

@HarryT: There was an ill-fated spelling reform in Germany in 1996 that most notably changed the spelling of the German ß [=ss] digraph. (It's still there, but it's used in fewer words.)

You can easily tell pre-1996 books apart from more recent books by looking for "daß" [= that (conj.)]. If you see "daß," the book was most likely originally published before 1996. (Post-1996 books use "dass.")

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

@HarryT: There was an ill-fated spelling reform in Germany in 1996 that most notably changed the spelling of the German ß [=ss] digraph. (It's still there, but it's used in fewer words.)

You can easily tell pre-1996 books apart from more recent books by looking for "daß" [= that (conj.)]. If you see "daß," the book was most likely originally published before 1996. (Post-1996 books use "dass.")

Yes, I know. When I doing evening classes in German at the time, my teacher was furious about the "neue Rechtschreibung". She said that most German academics had ignored the invitation to participate in discussions with the German government about the matter because nobody believed they'd ever be stupid enough to actually try to introduce it .

[doubleshuffle]

Well, the reformed orthography has its pros and cons. It contains quite a few silly changes, but also some simplifications that make a lot of sense, the new rules about ß and ss being a case in point.

But back to our Handwörterbuch: I just saw that it's also on the Duden website, with the definition I quoted above, and illustrated with this cute photo:

Now this picture most certainly doesn't depict a Hand-, but at best a Taschenwörterbuch...
Very funny.

[HarryT]

I'll post a picture of my "Handwörterbuch" when it arrives. I don't think it'll look like that .

Am I correct in thinking that the new rule is that "ß" is only used after a long vowel sound? So you have "dass" and "Schloss", but "Straße"? I guess that makes it easier to remember when to use "ß" and when to use "ss".