Langenscheidt
Encyclopedia
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
publishing company, specialising in language resource literature. As well as producing monolingual dictionaries
Dictionary
A dictionary is a collection of words in one or more specific languages, often listed alphabetically, with usage information, definitions, etymologies, phonetics, pronunciations, and other information; or a book of words in one language with their equivalents in another, also known as a lexicon...
, Langenscheidt also produces bilingual dictionaries and travel phrase-books, as well as maps and atlases.
Langenscheidt has language-to-language dictionaries in many languages, including, but not limited to: English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
, Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
, Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
, Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
, Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
, Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, Chinese
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
and Croatian
Croatian language
Croatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...
, and in varying sizes, ranging from small travel pocket dictionaries to large desk sized ones.
Dictionary structure
The structure for most Langenscheidt dictionaries is the same. Most pocket dictionaries include around 55,000 references designed for tourists or people studying beginning or intermediate foreign languageForeign language
A foreign language is a language indigenous to another country. It is also a language not spoken in the native country of the person referred to, i.e. an English speaker living in Japan can say that Japanese is a foreign language to him or her...
s, while larger desk sized dictionaries include around 220,000 references. After the two languages' references conclude, grammatical assistance appears in the Appendix section, including helpful abbreviations, geographical regions, currency values, temperature conversions, and numerical values.
Langenscheidt Publishing Group
Recently, Langenscheidt became the exclusive distributor of the Green MichelinMichelin
Michelin is a tyre manufacturer based in Clermont-Ferrand in the Auvergne région of France. It is one of the two largest tyre manufacturers in the world along with Bridgestone. In addition to the Michelin brand, it also owns the BFGoodrich, Kleber, Riken, Kormoran and Uniroyal tyre brands...
travel guides and the Red Michelin hotel and restaurant guides. Langenscheidt also distributes Forbes Travel Guides. Overall, the Langenscheidt Publishing Group offers over 3,000 international street maps, road maps, atlases, travel guides, language-learning guides, and bilingual dictionaries.
Langenscheidt also owns Berlitz Publishing and Insight Guides
Insight Guides
Insight Guides are a corporation based in London who create travel guides for commercial and domestic use. They produce travel guides and maps. They also produce globes. Insight Guides was founded by Hans Johannes Hofer...
.
The Langenscheidt Publishing Group was also a major map publisher in the United States, encompassing former privately held regional map publishers Arrow (Boston area), Hagstrom
Hagstrom Company
Hagstrom Map is the best-selling brand of maps in the New York City metropolitan area. It was formerly part of the Langenscheidt publishing group, who sold its map division to Universal Map, an affiliate of Kappa Publishing Group, in 2010....
(New York area), Patton (Philadelphia area), ADC
ADC Map
ADC Map, also referred to as ADC, is a publisher of maps and street atlases covering areas in Washington, DC, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Delaware and New Jersey. Although previously an independent entity, it was later owned by the Langenscheidt Publishing Group...
(Washington DC/Baltimore/Mid-Atlantc area), Creative Sales (CSC) (Chicago area), and Trakker (Florida). They also have national and international coverage with American Map Company (AMC) and Hammond Map
Hammond Map
Hammond Map or Hammond World Atlas Corporation is an American map company. It was formerly an operating subsidiary of The Langenscheidt Publishing Group, a major map publisher in the United States, but was sold to Universal Map, an affiliate of Kappa Publishing Group, in 2010.The company was...
respectively, which absorbed the assets of General Drafting
General Drafting
General Drafting Corporation of Convent Station, New Jersey, founded by Otto G. Lindberg, was one of the "Big Three" road map publishers from 1930 to 1970, along with H.M. Gousha and Rand McNally...
in 1992. Langenscheidt's map division was sold to Universal Map, an affiliate of Kappa Publishing Group
Kappa Publishing Group
Kappa Publishing Group, Inc. is a Blue Bell, Pennsylvania based publishing company concentrating on adult puzzle books and magazines as well as children's magazines and maps. It is a private company founded in 1955 with $11.5 million in annual sales....
, in 2010.