Customer Reviews

Colloquial Italian: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Like the French, Latin American Spanish, (European) Spanish, Romanian, German and (European) Portuguese entries that I have seen in this very comprehensive series this is an excellent book and cassette system for beginners or for review. If you learn everything in this book you will be well prepared for travel. It is also a fine starting point for thos who wish to deepen their knowledge with more advanced systems such as Ultimate Italian. You get a lot for your money. It is just what it says: colloquial. It is modern but correct usage. It is neither overly academic in usage nor overly slangy.

I spent hours looking through the numerous language titles. This one impressed me in it's style. By the time I got through the first chapter, I was over the moon!

If you are considering getting the book only, DON'T!

I have bought many Italian resources (books, software) and if I could only have one, this would be it.

The price is impressive as well.

I took Colloquial Italian with me to Italy last year, where I was to stay for one year as an exchange student. This language course was fundamental in teaching me the basics ( not just touristy questions like a lot of other courses!).
It was so good that I lent it out to other students who were dispairing over the language, and all had similar success with it.
Un ottimo introduzione alla lingua italiana, per chi voule imparare facilmente.

I bought this from the Colloquial languages series because I had used the "Colloquial Japanese" in 1983 and found it exceptionally useful - I still use phrases from that book. What I liked at that time was the speedy pace, the intelligent and full discussions of Japanese grammar, and the relatively wide standard vocabulary for both reading and speaking. What I was trying to get away from was the Phrase Book approach - which treats you as if a) you are stupid and scared of grammar, b) only interested in buying souvenirs. So how was Colloquial Italian?

On grammar, about middling. I found it irritating to have to learn the first person singular, then a little later the first and second person singular, and then again later the first second and third person singular. My feeling is that we need to learn paradigms, lets get on with it. Postponing it does not make it easier. In Colloquial Italian you only get the plural of first conjugation regular present tense on page 77, halfway through chapter 5. Still the discussions of grammar, when they come, are intelligent and informative.

On vocabulary, I was again disappointed, for the book is directed primarily at the American tourist. Again, one needs to learn a good deal, so let us not hang back. The chapters are broken into several little sections, with a few words each. Much better to have one place with all the vocabulary listed in some rational order. Then one could start by learning it all by rote before working through each chapter. This would reinforces memory and also makes systematic study / revision far easier. Still, at least the book has a glossary that covers words used in the text so if you cannot recall which list it was in, you still have some recourse.

If I look back at languages I have persevered with, I have in fact used them more for general reading and for watching films than as a tourist. I also have some experience as a schoolboy learning language systematically and effectively. I am clearly not the target learner for this (or any other current language learning) book

This book is sold as a "New Edition." I wonder if the old edition would be more to my taste. Probably the dumbing down and the narrow focus on tourists derives from the publisher. I would like one publisher however to set out to satisfy the language learner of broad interests. They would have that section of the field to themselves. Perhaps they should have two versions, the "normal edition" and the "tourist" edition".

If you're new to Italian, this course is an excellent choice. The material covered is relevant to everyday life while still providing enough tourist-conscious text to help both types of learners : those interested in studying the language itself, and those interested in gaining conversational skills for travel purposes or otherwise.

The course is well organized and informative, providing plenty of vocabulary and example sentences to steadily build a strong working knowledge of the language. You'll learn everyday conversation in tandem with needed phrases and words for getting by (such as asking about prices, making plans, and so forth), and there are also cultural notes in the reading passages from the get-go to help you become more familiar with Italian life. The recorded material accompanying the course is strongly recommended -- toward the beginning of the course, dialogues and reading texts are presented at a fairly even-toned pace, and soon afterward it switches to a speed closer to that of everyday speech. Exercises to test your knowledge are presented throughout, and the answer key is of course provided at the back of the book. Almost all verb tenses are introduced, with the historical past tense omitted (although in the grammar section at the back of the book, it does list the regular conjugations alongside some of the most common irregular forms -- it's not essential that you learn this tense for your own use, but being able to recognize it when it you hear/read it is definitely recommended).

What definitely impressed me about this course is that it summarizes the numerous Italian dialects into a comprehensive guide of which terms and phrases are most common. Among these dialects are countless differences varying from pronunciation to choice of words, and the vocabulary chosen for this course provides an excellent middle ground. You should be able to communicate confidently and understand the majority of what you'd most likely hear or read if you learn this entire course. If you're interested in a course that is oriented more toward tourists but still teaches grammar, I'd recommend finding a copy of "Hugo Italian in Three Months". If you're instead interested in progressing further with self-study in the language, the next step would be moving to the "Living Language : Ultimate Italian" courses, available in both a beginner-intermediate level and an advanced level (and both including plenty of recorded material).

I have used the Routledge Colloquial series for teaching and learning for my own pleasure for numerous languages. This is certaily the best the series has to offer. Sylvia Lymbery does an outstanding job of making you feel at home and comfortable learning Italian. It's almost like sitting with the author and having a chat over a nice espresso! Well done!

Colloquial Italian is well organized and easy to use. It teaches the reader Italian that is current and useful. I liked it very much.

This was the worst tool I ever bought, maybe because I have used plenty other books to teach myself other languages. This was a huge disappointment. I've taken Spanish, German, French, Latin, Hebrew and taught myself Slovak with this series- which the Slovak book was excellent. That's why I bought this one. It's simply the authors fault that her style sucks. She liked to emphasize the value of guessing, which she stated and implied by the fact that she hardly included any vocab after the reading nor in the glossary. That's ok, I have a dictionary to look up nearly every new word. She said it's ok to make mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes, but when you're explained things appropriately, you're going to make fewer. I think that linguists are very precise people, this book is not precise. It leaves a lot to the imagination. Not to mention, I noticed mistakes two English mistakes. When you got to il passato remoto, she didn't even bother to go into it; saying in the North it's hardly used, but in the South used very often. She also says when you're an advanced student, then it's important. Except it's important to me now, that's why I've always succeeded. My family is from Sicily, I guess I want to know it. Next when she introduces you to the subjunctive, she starts with the imperfect subjunctive. Now I haven't had Spanish for a few years, so I really needed to refresh my memory. If I didn't know it at all, this would have been very confusing. Maybe starting with the present subjunctive would have been more logical..

Maybe I'll just write my own book :)