Customer Reviews

501 Italian Verbs

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This book is absolutely packed with almost everything a language student could need. As it lists, there are five hundred one verbs, all arranged alphabetically throughout the book. It lists each verb in its seven simple tenses (present indicative, imperfect, past absolute, future, present conditional, present subjunctive, and imperfect subjunctive) and its seven compound tenses (present perfect, past perfect, past anterior, future perfect, past conditional, past subjunctive, and past perfect subjunctive). It has a page on pronunciation of Italian vowels and consonants, and then it goes into talking about how to conjugate the verbs. It begins with showing how to conjugate regular verbs, following this with the Italian translations of each tense's and mood's name. An example conjugation of an English verb is then shown to help illustrate what each tense means. After this comes further explanation of the verbs' tenses and moods, in which it deals with each of the fourteen given tenses. It simplifies the regular conjugation endings after this by showing what is taken away and added to each infinitive for each tense. Then finally come the five hundred one verbs, each one with at least two example sentences to help the reader understand its usage. Afterward comes a section on verbs which take a preposition, a list of phrases in Italian for dealing with everyday situation, days, months, how to count to 100, currency, weights, measures, temperatures, and clothing measurements. Lastly come two indices dealing with the verbs: first the index about irregular forms commonly found in the language, matching them with the verb from which they are inflected; then comes the index of English-Italian verbs as a cross-reference. This is an awesome choice to not be overlooked. Glancing through the book every so often will help to increase your vocabulary, and if you stick to a plan of learning so many verbs a day/week, you'll be learning them even more quickly. It's a simple and awesome book that any student or teacher would enjoy and appreciate.

This book was very helpful for the Beginner to Intermediate. A constant source for reference as well as for "pulling together" the thousands of idioms and related vocabulary which is helpful only if you can use the verb correctly. A basic and a must for Italian studenti! I lost my copy to my professor and had to buy another one. A great value.

I agree with the reviews below: this is a fabulous collection of verb paradigms for both learning and reference. But a significant flaw is that neither the word stress nor the quality of the stressed vowels are indicated.

The stress on the present tense of italian verbs (and some infinitives) is not predictable from its orthorgraphy and it may appear on either the penult or the antepenult of a verb. Such information is necessary in order for a learner to acquire a correct pronunciation, and it is missing in this book.

Moreover, a stressed "e" or "o" may be pronounced either open or close in Italian verbs in the present tense and in some irregular past-tense and past-participle forms; but in this book, there is no indication of a preferred pronunciation. Such information would be of great intrest to a learner who wanted to develop a native-like accent.

In order to find information regarding verb stress and vowel quality, a learner would need to consult a second dictionary.

As an alternative, I would recommend, at least for starters, the trade paperback called "200 Italian Verbs" by Barnes and Noble. Although it is limited to 200 verbs, the stress is conveniently indicated by an acute accent on verbs with close "e" and "o" and by a grave accent on verbs with open "e" and "o". This publication is out of print but still available on line for under five dollars from used-book sellers.

This book leaves out accents. For examples, take the verb abitare. In the pres. ind. this verb is accented as such: Abito, Abiti, Abita, abitiAmo, abitAte, Abitano. Unlike some of the other Romance languages, typically Italian only accents words having a stress on the last syllable, e.g., società. Therefore, the authors of this book should have used some means to indicate where the stress falls in various verbs deviating from the rule that the word is stressed on the penult. This is a serious fault with this type of work!

This guide got me through my first year of Italian studies, with almost all of the verbs (and definitely all the tenses) I needed for basic composition and conversation. Certain verbs are missing, and the names of the tenses are in English (all students I know learn the names of the tenses in Italian; I had to read the guide in the beginning of the book to figure out what I wanted). This book worked through Beginning Italian I & II, but a more comprehensive guide is needed for Intermediate levels.

I'm an Italian fifteen boy and I love foreign languages. I think Italian verbs are very difficult for english people, cos' verbs change during the coniugation (like: io vado, tu vai egli va, noi andiamo, voi andate, essi vanno). I think 501 verbs are a lot!
I've found an error in the ABBRONZARE pages. Don't say TI PIACE ABBRONZARE? but TI PIACE ABBRONZARTI? and it's wrong also NON ABBRONZARE TROPPO!, that's NON TI ABBRONZARE TROPPO!
It's a good support to every course.

Beginners will find this book constantly useful. More advanced students will refer to those pesky irregular verbs which they seem not to use quite often enough to memorize. The content, layout and fonts are well designed for fast reference. A wealth of indices will extend the book's reach, and these should be consulted before concluding that the book does not have your verb, particularly the index "One Thousand Italian Verbs Conjugated like the 501 Model Verbs." Materials and construction are sturdy; despite heavy use, mine's in much better shape than the dictionary that I bought with it in 2002. The one major annoyance is the complete lack of guidance in stress. In the conjugated verb forms the stress in more than a few instances seems to be arbitrary; you have to memorize these case by case, but this book won't help with that. Since a verb book like this is likely the only place where you will find the comprehensive conjugated forms, the stress information belongs here. No more paper or ink would be needed; simply underlining or bolding the stressed syllable would do the trick. That aside, I would not be without it.

Outstanding verb book which highlights the most important verbs and gives examples of usage. Best book I've seen yet and comes with a CD-ROM.

The 500 verbs book is right there beside me, next to the dictionary when I read an Italian article or book, as a review for my next trip. I've learned Italian pretty well, but I must admit I didn't learn all the subjunctives, literary pasts, etc. The answers are here in these charts!

My review of this book might be better if I'd started using it when I was first given it, before I'd learned much about the language. It does fully conjugate 501 verbs which can be of real value when learning to speak. However, pronunciation aids are missing (as others have noted) and I feel that this book loses all its value once you understand how to conjugate regular verbs. Italian verbs end in -are -ere -ire -orre -urre and in most cases the conjugations are identical for each verb of a particular ending. The real issue is when you come across irregular verbs like "fare" (to do) which don't follow the normal rules. The number of regular verbs far outstrips the number of irregular verbs. The selection of verbs in this book is also a little suspect as the regular verb "to gnaw" can be found but "to remember" and "to forget" are missing. So if you find yourself lost in the country and unable to ask who remembers the way back (or why the map is missing from your bag, or even if your buddy likes the view), not to worry, you can still fill time talking about the squirrel and his acorn. In my opinion, this book would be of vastly more use if it explained the regular conjugations then simply listed regular verbs, and left the full conjugations to irregular verbs. Reflexive verbs like vergognarsi (to be embarrassed) are also in short supply. Granted, these usually follow the rules (once you know what the rules are), but I had turned to the book to find out how to properly use "ho dimenticato" versus "mi sono dimenticato" (I forgot), but found no help.