Online Spanish Dictionary

You may want to learn Spanish to communicate with Spanish speakers, or you may just want to know what they're really saying in Latino music; regardless of your reason for learning, there are great resources online for you.

Finding An Online Spanish Dictionary

One of the best tests for the extensiveness of the language in an online Spanish dictionary is the dirty-language test: what naughty words does the dictionary translate?

For simple single-entry lookups, the Online English to Spanish Dictionary partially passes this difficult test, though it doesn't seem to give more than one translation per word. There is also a good Portuguese to English dictionary at this site.

If you want a good Spanish dictionary you can download to your handheld device, try Microsoft's Spanish dictionary for their MS Reader utility.

The Word Reference Spanish dictionary has a more extensive word listing, passing the dirty-word test with flying colors, and has more information, but also has the occasional annoying popup advertising window. You'll also find a good monolingual standard online Spanish dictionary here. Word Reference is probably the best you'll find.

Other Spanish Language Resources

The Spanish Grammar wikibook is a great place to start learning Spanish online, and like every wiki it grows better every day. Another good Spanish language resource, also completely free, is Spanish Kit.

In addition to written-language Spanish, you should practice some spoken language. StudySpanish.com has some very nice spoken-language practices, as well as several good written Spanish exercises and resources; it is primarily a site designed to sell their advanced language lessons, but the lessons they provide for free are excellent.

If you need a block of text or a website translated to or from Spanish, you can use Alta Vista's Babelfish to do this for you. Be warned: this can sometimes result in strange translations. There's a whole culture of humor built around translating things into a foreign language using Babelfish and then back to English.

Cultural Notes

There are several different dialects of Spanish, each with a slightly different vocabulary; the best Spanish dictionaries will point out differing meanings of words according to the dialect or country.

You should also know that the Spanish language is also referred to as Castilian, particularly by the Basques and Valencians; they consider it highly offensive to call Spanish "Spanish", as they also are Spanish but speak their own language. Keep that in mind if you visit these parts of Spain.

Portuguese, spoken in Portugal and Brazil, is very similar to Spanish, and bilingualism between speakers of these two languages is very common.