Italian All-in-One For Dummies

by Antonietta Di Pietro, Francesca Romana Onofri, Teresa L. Picarazzi

Your all-encompassing guide to speaking, reading, and writing Italian

Buongiorno! Italian All-in-One For Dummies brings together content from the Italian Dummies library into one handy guide that covers all the bases of the Italian language. Plus, go beyond the book and get online for access to even more opportunities to practice speaking the language. If you want to improve your Italian, whether it's for work, travel, or enjoyment, Italian All-in-One For Dummies has you covered.

• Talkin' the Talk — explore some basic Italian pronunciation and phrases, common greetings, and everyday conversational topics

• Out and about — get the know-how to confidently navigate public transportation, dine out, find a hotel, and handle an emergency in Italian-speaking regions

• Get down with grammar — grasp the various parts of speech, including nouns, articles, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs and tenses

• If you build it… — find out how to build compound tenses, use reflexive verbs in the past, master the past conditional and past perfect, get a grip on progressing rhgouh gerunds in Italian, and more


Whether you're a pure beginner or have some familiarity with the language, " Italian All-in-One For Dummies" is your ticket to speaking and writing Italian.

Genres: Language, Nonfiction, Italian Literature, Reference

672 pages, Paperback

First published June 17, 2013

Reviews

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

Helped a lot alongside my Duolingo exercises.

[Soobie is expired · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was my first Dummies book.

Why on earth did I choose to read a Dummies book for learning Italian? Well, first I wanted to see how these books works and I thought that seeing how they present my own mother tongue would be the best way. Second, it's always interesting to see how foreigners learn Italian. I mean, what's difficult for them and what things get them confused. In addition, it's a reflection on Italian from a foreign student point of view. I mean, I've never though about the come se sentences before.

To be honest, I liked the first two book better. They presented the basic language even if I was a bit taken aback by the language they choose to present. I mean, truzzo?!? This word was used between my second and third year of high school (circa 1996-1998) and referred to a particular teen tribe. Buffalo shoes (those with a 10cm platform, perfect to walk across puddles), synthetic fabrics, skinny jeans and greasy hair seemed to be their must-have. Not a nice sight, I swear. If you say truzzo to an Italian teen nowadays, they will look at you with wide eyes because they don't know what it means.

Book V was a bit confusing. I don't know if it was me or if it was the book. I know subjunctive is hard but they made it confusing as heck, as well. SIGH!

Next Dummies book? Polish!

[Ben Mizrahi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good as a reference book but not for studying. It is especially good if you need to review specific aspects such as the conjunctive.

[Mic · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book presupposes a lot of knowledge of grammatical rules and concepts. I had not learnt much about English grammar, let alone Italian grammar, which really revealed to me the uphill battle that I would be facing learning a new language. It also made me question why I knew so little about the grammatical rules of my native language. Quite pathetic really. Having said that, this book is not only assisting me in learning Italian, it's also helping me learn my own language better with regard to the aforementioned grammatical rules.

[Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Explanations are clear, and the authors have a very logical way to explain Italian grammar. There is insufficient vocabulary presented, and there is a lack of reading examples. This book would be a better review (of grammar) than it is as a first introduction to the Italian language.

[Andrew L Geller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well organised

I enjoyed this book and found it very helpful. Well written and enjoying to read. It was very helpful and fun.