Soluzioni: A Practical Grammar of Contemporary Italian (Routledge Concise Grammars)

by Denise de Rome

A Practical Grammar of Contemporary Italian combines an engaging reference and practice grammar explained in clear and concise language with numerous supporting exercises. Aimed at keen students of all levels, Soluzioni This fourth edition continues the accessible methodology and focus on contemporary usage that has made Soluzioni the clearest and most comprehensive pedagogic grammar on the market today. Fully updated, it covers key areas of difficulty such as tense usage, the subjunctive, causative verbs, combined pronouns and word order. It also pays attention to the links between grammar and communicative functions as well as those between grammar, context and register. Suitable for class use and independent study, Soluzioni is the ideal reference and practice resource for learners of Italian. It is particularly suitable for fast-track use in ab initio courses at university and college.

Genres: Italian Literature, Nonfiction, Reference

496 pages, Paperback

First published November 29, 2002

Reviews

[Alastair · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book seems to be a complete grammar — and although it does contain a lot, it is hard to work with.

Firstly, it is difficult to find anything: there’s no cross-referencing of Italian/English grammatical terms (eg. congiuntivo - see subjunctive) because when learning a language you learn the grammar terms in that language, not in English.

Another thing is that "Lei" (2nd Person formal) is sometimes written with and sometimes without a capital letter. This is confusing for learners, and I think a grammar book (of all things) should stick to correct capitalised "Lei" in order to avoid confusion with the third person singular “lei”.

One annoying problem (and to be honest there is hardly a grammar book out there which covers this issue in detail) is that there is no clear focus on the stress patterns of the verbs, sometimes it is mentioned in passing, but usually not present at all!

The layout of the book is quite good, but certain grammatical structures don’t have their own section: conditional sentences, for example, are scattered throughout the book making it very hard to to compare the differences between them all.

The examples and exercises are useful but the answers aren’t in the book, you have to download a pdf.

Worst of all, the book and pdf with the answers still (in the 4th edition) contain obvious errors and typing mistakes!

It could have been a good resource but unfortunately it has too many flaws.

[Michael Milton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I marked this as "read" but will continue to read it indefinitely.

It's a very well designed, readable, and (so far as I can tell) comprehensive guide to Italian grammar. Whenever I want to plow into another area of Italian grammar I'm always happy to pick up this book.