In my view, all English-Welsh dictionaries are outrageously bad (forgive me this invective, but I can't help it. None of all those lexicographers ever seems to have thought of the fact that languages do not only consist of words, but also have a lot of phrases, idiomatic expressions etc. None of these dictionaries takes that into account. To give you a good example: the simple english phrase "to look up a word in the dictionary": what a learner, particularly a native speaker of English will do is look up the words (unless he knows them anyway) and come up with a translation "edrych y fyny gair yn y geiriadur" - this sounds strange in my ears, and conscientious Welsh speakers have explained to me that this is bad Welsh. Their solution was "chwilio am air yn y geiriadur". Of course, I know that calques appear everywhere in Welsh, but I think part of them could be avoided if the dictionary told you how to do it. After all, you don't want your language to be "anglicised" too much, do you? Another thing: the dictionary does not tell you about semantics, connotations of words, you always have to ask a native speaker (or a conscientious learner). Anyone who knows a bit about linguistics knows that "meaning" is a very complicated thing, to say the least. For example, before I did the Llambed Wlpan (which I can only recommend) I once wanted to say "It was a strange situation". What I did say was "sefyllfa ddieithr", which might be translated to English as "a foreign situation" (don't ask me what that is, it does not make sense). What I should have said was "sefyllfa ryfedd" (neu "sefyllfa od", wrth gwrs), but Y Geiriadur "Mawr" just presents you the words without differentiating them. So how could I know???? Moreover, if you want to translate something from English to Welsh, you get a word, but not more than that. You do not know whether it is masc. or fem. and you don't get the plural either. so you go back to the Welsh-English part where you get that information, but it is very tiring... I find it most annoying. Someone told me a new English-Welsh dictionary was being prepared at Bangor University (yr un rhwng Sir Fo+n ac Eryri, wrth gwrs). Is that true? And have they thought of including phrases and describing semantic nuances of words? Once more, forgive me these complaints. They come from a conscientious learner who has become quite frustrated at times (incidentally, I liked the "light bulb" joke). Cheers, Stefan (Stefan.Schumacher@uibk.ac.at) P.S. Fe gallwn i fod wedi ysgrifennu hyn yn Gymraeg, ond roeddwn i am i'r dysgwyr ddeall popeth a ysgrifennais i, nid o achos nad allwn i ddweud hyn yn Gymraeg. s.