Customer Reviews

Reference Grammar of Modern Italian

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This is a rigorous grammar text using a fair amount of linguistics lingo (all of which is defined). Both this book and Anna Proudfoot's Modern Italian Grammar (which complements Maiden) should be in the library of any serious student of Italian. If you need more than these two books provide, you'll have to find it written in Italian, not in English. Some of Maiden's book (or a lot) will be over your head, but it's a great reference to grow into.

This book is an excellent resource. It covers the essentials and it helps the user to answer the questions: "How do I say..." and "How do I form..." which most American reference texts published in the States do not do--in a way that is systematic and logical. The author, Robert Maiden, is a Professor of Romance Linguistics at Oxford--that says it in a "nut shell!" Whenever I've needed a good English-Italian grammar reference or book, I've always had to rely on the British scholars and publishers. Sorry to say this but the American market is generally saturated with fluff and gloss. This reference book is an excellent alternative to the "fast buck" junk on the market and makes a good companion book to Italiano Vivo, by Giorgio Milesi, published by Thomas Nelson & Sons, LTD, UK. A highly recommend it.

I am no novice to grammars. I have been reading them for pleasure in dozens of languages for the past thirty years. When I learned Italian in college I skipped the basic courses and essentially taught myself the grammar, which was easy with prior knowledge of French and Spanish. Although I am fluent in Italian, most of what I know has come from using the language in real life, and there is much that I know intuitively but have never seen described in a grammar, even some excellent short grammars written in Italian.

As in any language, there are many subtleties, non-standard usages and simple matters of idiom that are just not covered in standard grammars, yet constitute matters of everyday usage and are often the essence of sounding natural in a language, rather than "translated". Professors Maiden and Robustelli have written a masterpiece of practical linguistics--I would say one of the best concise grammars I have ever come across in any language! While not truly exhaustive (impossible in a volume this size), they cover an astounding number of those issues that, as an advanced speaker, I knew intuitively but never knew the rule for. Moreover, they repeatedly offer insight into shades of connotation and regional differences. I had no trouble at all finding the sections relating to several high-level questions of mine, using the index. There is a great advantage to reading a grammar in English, rather than Italian, which is that idiomatic differences and similarities between the languages can be highlighted.

I can certainly sympathize with the frustrations of the college student trying to use this as a learner's grammar. The organization is a little bit idiosyncratic, but I think this is a function of its comprehensiveness. Many subsections just don't lend themselves to fitting neatly into an intuitive traditional grammatical structure. But in reality the conceptual organization of the chapters is brilliant and obviously reflects a lot of thought and deep understanding. I found the weakest section to be perhaps that on prepositions, but this is probably true of any grammar because of the idiomatic complexity of prepositional expressions, rendering them more a matter of semantic (lexical) study than strictly grammatical.

Remember, this is a REFERENCE grammar. If you are new to the language and try to read this from cover to cover, your head will swim. However, regardless of your level, if you are serious about Italian, you will never regret owning this text. I am eternally grateful to the authors for making it available.

I am a college student, who based on the glowing reviews bought this book to help with second-year college Italian. In retrospect, I think that those reviews must not have been written with students in mind. Yes, this book is impressively exhaustive. It covers all the minutiae (minutaie I bet most native Italian speakers don't know or care to know). What it does not do is provide a readable grammar guide for students looking for a comprehensive yet concise supplement to textbook grammar lessons. It uses unnecessary linguistic jargon that is often not layman-accessible (I didn't understand a lot of it on the first read, and I am not a complete beginner. I am fluent in two other languages and am quite used to most of the main grammatical concepts presented.) It is also very poorly organized. The index is quite good, but the book is somehow still a nightmare to navigate. Anyway, after several weeks of frustration I gave this book away and am currently searching for a good student-oriented Italian grammar guide. I'm sure there's one out there.

I just want to completely agree with the review of March 30, 2001 from Lock Haven PA. This is an exhaustive grammar reference. Think encyclopedia of grammar. A must for the commited learner of Italian.

I also agree with the Lock Haven review that the best Italian text books seem to come from the UK.

I agree with all the reviewers who praise this excellent and exhaustive Italian grammar. Unfortunately my copy was missing pp. 319-350, so I had to return the book. And those were the very pages that give a thorough treatment of the use of the subjunctive, which is so important and interesting in Italian. Otherwise, I would have enthusiastically given this book the five stars it deserves.

Based on the rave reviews I purchased this book. I am minoring in Italian and wanted a grammar that went into more detail than the very good, but basic one I own (Essential Italian Grammar Olga Ragusa). I have to agree with the other reviewer here who stated that this is not an easily accessible book. Like the other reviewer I too am near fluent in two other languages and already have a background in Italian. The book is not well organized, and though loaded with examples, few were of the kind that proved helpful in shedding light on the language in a way that improved my understanding of the nuances of usage. It is so poorly put together that I too am planning to toss it in the Goodwill bag, and look for another grammar book.

This is not an "advanced" grammar--it goes several steps beyond. It is so esoteric that I shall never need to use it to learn to speak Italian. Sometimes I have to go to the dictionary to learn the English words they use.

Excellent service, prompt delivery, excellent conditon
as described, packaged well.
Would use again.