Monolingual learner's dictionaries are written for learners of a foreign language. Most such dictionaries are aimed at advanced learners, but in English there are ones for elementary and intermediate users too. These tools of language education are based on the supposition that learners must move from a bilingual dictionary to a monolingual one as they advance in their study of the target language, but that general purpose dictionaries compiled for native speakers are too complex and indeed confusing for their needs. Learners' (or learner's) dictionaries include a lot of information on grammar, usage, common errors, false friends, collocations, and so on, which a native speaker knows intuitively. Conversely, these dictionaries leave out etymology and quotations, while they include example sentences.
The first English monolingual learner's dictionary was The Idiomatic and Syntactic Dictionary of English by A. S. Hornby published in 1942. This was republished as A Learner's Dictionary of Current English by Oxford University Press (OUP) in 1948. The second edition came in 1963, the third in 1974, both in several impressions. The dictionary was a huge financial success. This unparalleled success was, of course, the result of the boom in the English language teaching industry worldwide. It is now in its seventh edition as the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary.
The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English was published in 1978. The editors, led by Paul Proctor, introduced several innovations. The most striking was the use of a restricted defining vocabulary, which has now become a standard feature of learners' dictionaries. Almost a decade later another new player, the Collins Cobuild English Dictionary, came out, a significant milestone in corpus-based lexicography.
1995 was the 'year of the dictionaries': Oxford published its fifth edition, Longman its third, Cobuild its second, and yet another player appeared, the Cambridge International Dictionary of English by Cambridge University Press (CUP). 2002 saw the entrance of yet another competitor: the Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners.
The current editions in 2009 are the seventh for OUP, the fifth for Longman, the sixth for Collins COBUILD, the third for CUP, and the second for Macmillan.
Nielsen, Sandro (2008) "The effect of lexicographical information costs on dictionary making and use", in Lexikos (AFRILEX-reeks/series 18), pp. 170-189.
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