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Besta CyberDict 6


Mike Goodtime

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When I came to Thailand last year my "Thai lady friend" had an electronic dictionary. I said, Wow, where did you get that?

 

Well, we marched down to Siam Square (I think) and I went to the CyberDict kiosk. The customer service was awesome. They even put the manual in English on the removable storage chip that came with it.

 

Amoung all the cyber dictionaries from Besta I decided on the Besta CyberDict 6. I mainly decided on this because I did not know how long my interest in studying Thai would last and the next higher electronic dictionary was around $500.

 

I have had the CyberDict 6 for about a year and I really like it. The most impressive feature is that it will take an English word and will translate and pronounce it into 4 languages (Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Thai). The things I don't like about it are that it has no backlight, which will make it hard to read the screen if you are in a low light setting (e.g. a gogo bar). And the Thai to English and English to Thai word choice in the electronic dictionaries need some work. In my experience the Paiboon Publishing dictionaries are the best Thai dictionaries (print or internet) out there.

 

Any of the CyberDicts are a must have if you want to learn Thai and plan to spend some time in Thailand. Very compact and have tons of features.

 

Note: Paiboon Publishing is coming out with a revised dictionary in three types of editions in the near future!

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I bought the Besto 10 a few months ago. Has backlighting, color and many other features. I bought it because it was the only one that actually spoke Thai, e.g. provided a sound file for that words.

I am happy with it ecxept that afetr buying it, I found out that the spoken Thai only works in one of the dictionaries, the more limited one.

Still, having since learnt to read Thai (still elementary), that matters less now.

I suspect that of course, this dictionary was not produced in the first place to help farang learn thai, but to help thai with their english.

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I bought the Besto 10 a few months ago. Has backlighting, color and many other features. I bought it because it was the only one that actually spoke Thai, e.g. provided a sound file for that words.

I am happy with it except that after buying it, I found out that the spoken Thai only works in one of the dictionaries, the more limited one.

Still, having since learnt to read Thai (still elementary), that matters less now.

I suspect that of course, this dictionary was not produced in the first place to help farang learn thai, but to help thai with their english.

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Samak,

 

My Besta CyberDict 6 cost me 5,990 Baht.

 

Don't forget to get a VAT refund if you a tourist. You get the form printed up and signed at the department store. When you go to the airport get immigration to stamp it and then go to the VAT refund counter in the airport to get your refund. Like a dummy, I forgot to have immigration stamp my VAT form last year, so I got the shaft at the refund counter. I lost out on 400 Baht by not doing this.

 

The dictionary has PinYin, but I am not sure on the details of the Chinese language in the dictionary, in particular the hanzin thing.

 

There is no transliteration in the dictionary, just the languages' characters and script. I think this is a good thing; I hate transliteration.

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thanks Mike

 

sorry i am getting a bit confused about your answer!

 

PinYin is actually the english transliteration of chinese words, right?

 

for example:

�谷 those are the chinese characters (called hanzi)

mangu this is PinYin (english transliteration)

Bangkok this is the english translation of the word above

 

so are all 3 on your CyberDict?

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