It sticks to a basic vocabulary, has an entry for every word it uses, and goes heavy on examples and pictures in preference to formal definitions. (And it's monolingual even though written mainly for learners in North America.)
I don't have it to check, but estimating from memory: around 2000 to 4000 words. I found it useful while bootstrapping up from Duolingo.
That is actually a really interesting challenge: to have a completely self-contained dictionary. Especially in 1963, before modern automation, the proofreading required must have been a Herculean task.
Perhaps this could be some kind of measure for answering this question in and of itself: what is the smallest useful self-contained natural language dictionary that one can write?
If it goes heavy on examples and pictures, then it can probably give a more relaxed definition for words, knowing the context will be picked up from the pics and examples. Do you find that true?
Yes, it was like that. The philosophy was to support learning that tries to come closer to real-life immersion than typical school foreign-language classes did. (From my memory of the preface, the only part in English. Of course nothing back in the 1960s could really approach moving to France -- maybe nowadays you could using the internet.)
It sticks to a basic vocabulary, has an entry for every word it uses, and goes heavy on examples and pictures in preference to formal definitions. (And it's monolingual even though written mainly for learners in North America.)
I don't have it to check, but estimating from memory: around 2000 to 4000 words. I found it useful while bootstrapping up from Duolingo.