Lingvo English Dictionary

I’ve used this app for the better part of the last decade, and it’s taken me from my first steps into Russian to near-native fluency. I recommend this dictionary to all my students who are serious about learning the language because the significant cost inevitably pays for itself multiple times over. (If you’re still dabbling, stick to the free offerings for awhile before investing further.) This app was my crutch when learning to read poetry and prose, and I’m so thankful for it. Aside from the excellent Russian-English dictionaries, there are a couple very comprehensive Russian-Russian explanatory dictionaries that I wholeheartedly recommend as well. (If you add more of these, I will buy them!) There are thankfully no monthly service or subscription fees, which is a worrying rare benefit for apps as nice as this one. And, besides the overly long stretch of time that took to update for iPhone X models, the app support has been great. I can not vouch for the support of other languages, but if you are a committed English-speaking student of Russian (or vice versa) then this app is bordering on indispensable.

I purchased this app in spring 2011. I have used it at least several times a week, if not many times a day since. I work primarily with English-Ukrainian, but have also needed Russian, Slovak, and Hungarian at times. In Ukrainian I use the basic, explanatory, and pronunciation dictionaries. I lived in Ukraine for four months and this thing was the single most valuable tool I brought. It works really well, has tons of useful info, and almost never crashes. Update: 2017 I have used this almost daily for six years. Awesome product!

So far I use only the free Russian-English and English-Russian dictionary. And it is marvelous... far richer than the expensive Oxford version. It includes copious example sentences. I am extremely happy with this app and now use it as my primary Russian dictionary. One suggestion for improvement, since English speakers learning Russian are also users: the stress marks of Russian words should be shown. This is vital for foreigners whose native language is not Russian. Most dictionaries have this. One further note: i own some other ABBY apps and all of them are very good.

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Don’t trust this company. This app is a replacement for a Lingvo translator’s dictionary app that users paid less to use, but had most definitions needed to perform accurate translations. The old app was first “put out to pasture,” left unmaintained and unsupported. Then it was pulled entirely from the App Store. Now there’s this app that’s taking the place of a product I already paid for. By the way, it has an almost identical icon and name. In-app purchases of the dictionaries I need in order to have a standard working translator’s dictionary would now cost me well over $300, and if I wanted it to be more complete, over $500. No way. Since my old app is dead and gone, I’m going to buy paper dictionaries with that money and scan/OCR process it all myself so no one can yank it out from under me again. Don’t be surprised if your several-hundred-dollar investment into the in-app purchases disappears in the next 4 years or so. I’m sure they’ll do the same thing to this app when they find another way to re-release it to make everyone pay even more for something they already paid for.

This app is wonderful for Russian. It’s able to search for and show declensions. The main thing it is missing is accents, which I very much hope they will add.