A good grammar book will walk you through your language’s grammar in a thoughtful, step-by-step manner.1 On the way, it will introduce you to a thousand words or so, give you a bunch of examples and exercises, and provide you with an answer key. You will skip 90 percent of the exercises in the book, but having them around will save you a lot of time once we begin to learn grammar. If the book gives you “Englishy” pronunciation for each word (Bonjour: bawn-JURE, Tschüss: chewss), I give you permission to burn it and find a different one. Walking into a Parisian cafe and saying “bawn-JURE” is a
...more
