Lenny: Best Paper Dictionary (intermediate)

If you've got the basic grammar down and now what you need is a handy pocket reference so you can find out how to say "aspirin" at the drug store, then "Lenny" (as I call him) is the paper dictionary for you.

Lenny's strengths (in comparison to Chubby) include:

• He's even smaller than Chubby (about half the thickness)
• A generally more inclusive vocabulary
• Chinese pronunciation guide
• Alphabetical order for Chinese entries (as opposed to hanzi grouping) making it very easy to look up a Chinese word

Lenny's weaknesses:

• He's even smaller than Chubby (not for the hard-of-seeing)
• No sentence examples (but by now you shouldn't need them as much)
• Some strange vocabulary differences between him and Chubby (but there are so many words for the same thing in Chinese, I suppose it's to be expected)
• I've never seen Lenny for sale in China

If you've got a handle on basic Chinese and you want to forget that you've got a dictionary in your pocket, I highly recommend bringing Lenny home.

For my review of an online dictionary click here