Reliable and free online dictionaries for your target language
This list of resources has been painstakingly researched by my team as part of our PREMIUM language immersion product
American Sign Language
- ASL pro have a very useful dictionary for learners of this language, where you click through the alphabet and see the word visually signed for you via real videos by signers for each and every word. Excellent online resource that is totally free! On the same page, at tabs at the top, you have further specific dictionaries for religious terms, conversational phrases and signs for babies.
- Signing Savvy is another one, although there are many features of this site blocked by paid membership. You can’t search, but you can go through the alphabetic list to click particular ones without registering. A free registration only gives you 5 searches per day. In most cases to look up single words, you can find them in the alphabetic list without signing up.
Chinese (Mandarin)
- http://www.iciba.com/
- http://dict.youdao.com/
- http://dict.cn/
- http://www.nciku.com/
- http://www.zdic.net/
- http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php
- http://xh.5156edu.com/
- https://www.moedict.tw/ – For a more Taiwanese perspective
- And for Chinese-Chinese dictionaries, as well as several of the above, try http://dict.baidu.com/
Chinese (Cantonese)
Czech
- Slovnik
- Seznam
- http://prirucka.ujc.cas.cz/ – Not good for definitions, but a useful one for conjugations and word inflections
Dutch
- http://www.vandale.nl/ – Bilingual and monolingual!
English
- Oxford dictionaries have an online searchable monolingual English database that contains 145,000 words and definitions; very useful for English learners among you!
- Collins dictionary is a great monolingual one with several bilingual options too!
- Urban dictionary is a resource I use even myself to find new slang terms in English, and acroyms that I haven’t come across yet, when they come up in casual situations
- Cambridge Learner’s dictionary
Esperanto
- http://lernu.net/ – Whenever I am not sure of a word in Esperanto, I use the free dictionary search tool built into this great Esperanto learning site. It works with many language combinations (Esperanto-English/French/Polish etc.)
- Reta Vortaro is a great one, popular with many Esperantists
- http://esperanto-panorama.net/vortaro/eoen.htm – Not as extensive, but you can look through the entire list of terms alphabetically.
- You can also use a monolingual Esperanto dictionary on http://vortaro.net/, after a free registration.
French
- http://www.larousse.fr – Larousse’s site is great for both their bilingual dictionaries, and for their French-French dictionary.
- http://littre.reverso.net (dictionnaire-francais) – Probably one of the more popular online monolingual dictionaries used by the French themselves
- Le grand dictionnaire terminologique, Quebec’s officially promoted dictionary – very useful for technical terms.
- http://www.crisco.unicaen.fr/des/ – French monolingual dictionary of synonyms!
- http://dictionnaire.sensagent.com/a/fr-fr/ – Another monolingual dictionary!
German
- dwds.de – A monolingual German dictionary that goes into great detail for each word, including incredible context tabs and etymology.
- http://www.duden.de/ – As above, also gives tonnes of info for each word
- http://dict.leo.org/ – You can search directly between German and English / Spanish / French / Italian / Polish / Russian / Portuguese / Chinese, and many translations are offered.
- http://www.dict.cc/ – Another fantastic choice for a bilingual German dictionary.
- http://de.pons.eu/ – Yet another great alternative, that also has a tonne of combinations other than German-English. Note that you can use this as a great dictionary for Norwegian and other languages, as long as you use it through German.
- http://dict.tu-chemnitz.de/ – And one more for luck!
Greek (Classical)
Hebrew
Hungarian
- http://szotar.sztaki.hu/angol-magyar – Bilingual dictionary. Also includes Hungarian to other languages.
- http://topszotar.hu/angolmagyar/ – Another bilingual option
Irish
- http://focal.ie/ – This dictionary is better for technical terminology
- http://www.potafocal.com – A great alternative if you don’t find what you are looking for in the above two links.
Italian
- http://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/italiano/ – Extensive monolingual Italian dictionary
Japanese
- http://www.excite.co.jp/dictionary/ – Monolingual and bilingual!
- http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/ – This lets you look up a monolingual dictionary, a bilingual oneand a Japanese-Chinese dictionary all at the same time!
- http://www.alc.co.jp/ – This one includes a lot of example sentences
- http://jisho.org/
- http://tangorin.com/
- http://dic.yahoo.co.jp/
- http://nihongo.monash.edu/cgi-bin/wwwjdic?1C (For Japanese to English)
- http://www.sanseido.net/
Korean
Latin
Polish
Portuguese
- http://www.dicionarioinformal.com.br/ – Great monolingual dictionary!
- http://www.priberam.pt/dlpo/ – Monolingual dictionary with both a European and a Brazilian search option for Portuguese
Russian
Sign Language (Various sorts)
- http://www.spreadthesign.com/ – Doesn’t cover many words, but it does separate the signs based on which country, if you are learning several different national signs, or a non-American one!
Spanish
- http://lema.rae.es/drae – A good monolingual Spanish dictionary from the Real Academia Española themselves!
- http://www.spanishdict.com/ – A good bilingual Spanish dictionary
Swedish
Turkish
Welsh
This list of resources has been painstakingly researched by my team as part of our PREMIUM language immersion product