Customer Reviews

Italian Stories: A Dual-Language Book (Dover Dual Language Italian)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I bought this book many years ago. The stories are short, between 5-20 pages each. They span many periods of history and is a great introduction to some of the great Italian writers.

Most of all, it really helps the Italian student bridge the gap between "classes" and "real Italian."

Although my speaking abilities were limited to an Intermediate Level, my classmates in a recent course I took thought that my vocabulary was tremendously large in comparison to their own.

I hold this book and another book by Penguin to be responsible. After reading these stories, I can read most anything in print and get the "gist" of what is being said.

The short stories are entertaining, and they cover Italian writers from Machiavelli to Pirandello.

But the reason I bought this book is to study Italian. With Italian on the left and English on the right, this collection presents students with an easy way to build vocabulary and sample "literary" writing not found in regular textbooks.

Students should have at least an intermediary knowledge of Italian, in order to at least recognize the various past tenses employed.

For the serious advanced student of Italian, I know of no better book to use as first step in exploring Italian literature. Translations are literal enough to give accurate correspondence to Italian, but literate enough to stand on their own in English as well: a marvelous achievement.

OK I haven't read much italian literature, but the italian stories I have read mostly seem to follow this rule:
You start with a problem...people work towards solving that problem...things end up much worse than you could have ever possibly imagined...
so its like American stories just instead of a happy ending, something terrible happens...or they just don't really end, the author just seems to stop writing...

but I digress...this book is a great tool for learning italian...I learned a lot, especially about conjugating verbs and such...vocab as well...even though I didn't like some of the stories, they weren't that bad and some of them I thought were entertaining...the one by Machiavelli, "Belfagor" I really liked...but the real great thing about these books is you are learning Italian w/o realing studying it...you know what I mean? Its not fun to sit in class but it is fun to read stories...you will be learning a lot more than you realize...sometimes I will try to read a whole story w/o looking at the translation, other times I will look at the translation for each line...its fun to go back and see how close you were to figuring out what really happened...

OK my favorite parts about this book were the vocab section and questionnaire at the end...the questions check to see if you understand what is going on, and the vocab has a many words, most of which I had never heard before...A great book...

Another excelent book for intermediate Italian Students. A good learning tool that is easy to follow.

In my opinion, this is a really good way to study Italian without going through those boring lessons, endless drills, and word repetitions. You read a story (not all of them are incredibly interesting) in English while learning Italian. After you have practiced for awhile, you can try to read the story in Italian and see how much you learned.

I give this book a low rating because it is advertised as suitable for students of Italian, but is simply not a good tool for beginning students. I am a beginner student who can speak basic Italian fairly well, but I had much difficulty with this book! It actually worsened my Italian some with confusing, outdated words.

My significant other is from Italy. After speaking with him (a very well educated person who attended liceo classico - Italian high school focusing on grammar, literature, history, and philosophy) and other Italians, I found that the stories in this book are for very advanced students who can already speak Italian.

Many of the words in these old stories are no longer used in speaking today. If you are trying to learn Italian, do not buy this book. If you are fluent in Italian, but your first language is English, and you want to learn about Italian history and culture, this book is good for you.

This is not a beginners book. I thought 'what a great idea', but the italian is old classical literature, not modern day italian. So its not so easy. My italian friend said this is not the best for lower level. Its like doing the shalespeare in italian translation. I'm keeping it for later when I get more classes under my belt.

I am an intermediate level Italian speaker. I agree with other reviewers that the language is often archaic. In addition, many of these pieces were written in old regional dialects that you probably won't see very often. It's fun to try to read the literature in the original language but as a learning exercise it's a two-edged sword.

To tell you the truth, if you're a beginnin or intermediate student, this product is a bit much. It's for the more advanced student. Frankly, I'm hoping I will get to the point that I can read this book,but I am not there yet. For the advanced student, it's great.