Ultralingua

This review is for both the app and two of the dictionaries (Apple won’t let me review the standalone dictionaries Ultralingua sells). The Ultralingua app itself is mostly great, in that you can have just one app for multiple dictionaries. However, unfortunately you can only search one dictionary at a time. If I’m looking for, say, an EN-ES translation of a word, I want to be able to search all my EN-ES dictionaries, not just one. It seems a single-app approach should allow this. As for content, well, I’ve learned that more words in a dictionary isn’t necessarily better. For my EN-ES example, the main one with 75k words isn’t better/worse than the Collins 55k one. The 75k one has more technical words (e.g., isotherm). But when I asked my Mexican wife to throw a test word at me (jamaica), the Collins dictionary had it (hibiscus), whereas the bigger 75k one didn’t. This is exactly why it would be great if you could search words across multiple installed dictionaries, or at least switch easily between different dictionaries for the same search term.

I originally installed the bookshelf from a recommendation from a single language Ultralingua dictionary with the promise that I could use it and dictionaries for other languages in one app. The problem is that the bookshelf has never pulled in the purchase of the single language dictionary as promised. The developers used to send one off codes so I could pull in the single language dictionary every time a change was made to the bookshelf and I lost access to that language, but a few years ago they stopped responding. Now I have the bookshelf app with five dictionaries and a single language app installed. Its less useful to me to have to search the single language app separately, and it bugs me to have to keep two apps installed. The problem has also dissuaded me from purchasing other dictionaries in the bookshelf app. I would have thought they’d have fixed this bug by now, but apparently this “feature”, which is still advertised within both apps, is not seriously supported.

As I glance over at my books on the traditional bookshelves, I feel nostalgic, revering those dinosaurs on the shelves, trying not to reminisce too much. I look at the dictionaries especially; they are looking back at me, silently sad, each one with its own memorable little history. One, titled Multidico, I purchased it in a bookstore in Tunis, Tunisia; I was attracted to it because it was multilingual and a reminder of my delightful fascination with linguistics and human communication! Alas, though, Multidico takes second place to Ultralingua, which I have used often to improve both my competence and performance in several Germanic and Romance languages! I appreciate both the verb conjugation and pronunciation tools! Thanks Ultralingua! May your business thrive and prosper!