Unconventional language hacking tips from Benny the Irish polyglot; travelling the world to learn languages to fluency and beyond!

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written by
Benny Lewis

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Reading time: 8 minutes

Published: May 31, 2013

Updated: Dec 26, 2021

Best free online language-specific monolingual and bilingual dictionaries

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written by
Benny Lewis

Full disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. ?

Throw away your dusty old dead tree dictionaries! They are either too bulky (and expensive) to use conveniently, and not updated regularly enough, or they are too small to cover all the words you might need. It's the 21st century, so lets embrace all the free online dictionaries available to us!

Multilingual dictionaries

When discussing the top free resources for language learning, I wanted to give tools that weren't language specific, and as such I included the following multilingual dictionaries first:

Wordreference, Bab.la, Google Translate for wide-ranges of languages covered for general terms and Proz term search , the Interactive Terminology for Europe and Mymemory for technical vocabulary.

Some of these can actually be good dictionaries for specific languages, and as good as, or better than many dedicated specific language dictionaries. (In the comments, I got suggestions for other great multilingual dictionaries: The Free Dictionary, which is a monolingual dictionary in multiple languages! Just click the flags on the left, and Linguee for a bilingual dictionary that gives you the words in context rather than just translations or definitions, and is good for several languages).

I am a big fan of Wordreference for major European languages, especially French, Spanish, and Italian, since I generally find what I'm looking for there, either within their dictionary, or from the forum questions that come up in dictionary searches. It is also good for looking up conjugations of verbs in these languages if you are not sure. Google Translate seems to be the easiest one to use for less common languages, although I welcome alternatives below!

As well as these, I highly recommend using Wikipedia to search for the word in English and see a possible translation in the left. This is obviously better for proper names, or specific items (not verbs etc.). Otherwise, look it up in the Wikipedia specific to that language and see its English or other translation on that page. Finally, I like to use Google Image search to give myself a visual understanding of the word, without relying on translations.

Having said that, in this post, I want to list as many free dictionary websites that cater better to specific languages. As with the free-resources post, I will strive to keep this post as updated as possible, so I will list just a few at first and then hope that your comments can help me expand this list to make it a nice go to dictionary.

Also keep in mind that you can use many of these online dictionaries in conjunction with Learning With Texts for quick access to translations while you read.

Bilingual (and monolingual) dictionaries:

Now, keep in mind that I would highly recommend you don't rely too much on bilingual dictionaries!! They can make us lazily just accept translations rather than truly try to understand a phrase and its component words, through context. If you want to start thinking in that language, then you should aim to learn the language via that language asap, and monolingual dictionaries are a great way to do that.

Their purpose of a dictionary for anyone but tourists should always be to help you learn a language, rather than to replace the learning process with instant translations. It's why I opt to use monolingual dictionaries as soon as possible and have tried to include as many here below as possible.

Feel free to share both bidirectional dictionaries and monolingual dictionaries in the comments, especially for languages that I haven't listed, and (as long as they are truly useful/extensive and free) I'll add them here! Also let me know your feedback on the ones I have included, in case you find any of them less than adequate compared to alternatives.

As an addition, if you don't find a monolingual dictionary for the language you want among those below, check out the many languages of Wiktionary and use the one in your target language!

This list is alphabetic – if you can't find the language you are learning here yet, check out the multilingual dictionaries linked above.

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)

Chinese (Cantonese)

Czech:

Dutch

Egyptian Arabic

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

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:

Irish:

Italian

Japanese

Korean

Polish:

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:

Swedish

Turkish

Welsh

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Benny Lewis

Founder, Fluent in 3 Months

Fun-loving Irish guy, full-time globe trotter and international bestselling author. Benny believes the best approach to language learning is to speak from day one.

Speaks: Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Esperanto, Mandarin Chinese, American Sign Language, Dutch, Irish

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