Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Serious omissions, 4 Nov 2006
This book seemed to cover all the usual Italian verbs until a closer inspection was made. Having leafed through half a dozen or so verb books I was suddenly bemused by the fact that this publication has totally missed out several very important verb models. The first one parere (to seem, appear), is listed in all the other guides and is of worthy note, not only because it is a common verb, but also that its most common use is in impersonal constructions. The second anomaly involves the 'uotere' family of verbs. Where are they? There is no reference to percuotere, ripercuotere, ripercuotersi, riscuotere or scuotere. With 200 fully-listed examples plus an index of 3000 to choose from, but only 111 or so different verb models needing to be covered, why have both of these vital verbs been missed out. Both appear in all the other publications I have including Harraps Italian Verbs (1991) for which I paid just £2.50 at the time. The 2 best Italian verb books I have found to date are: 1. 'The Complete Italian verb Book' by Angelo Guarnuccio published in 1993 (ISBN 1 875633 07 3) CIS Educational Books Australia, bought in the UK at the time for £6.95. It lists the verbs in blocks based on characteristics - a) all regular verbs, b)spelling changing verbs with endings - care, gare, ciare, giare etc., c)reflexives, d) impersonal weather verbs, e) other impersonal verbs followed by f) a complete set of irregulars. Finally an index of 1800 others completes a delightful publication. 2. 'i verbi italiani regolari e irregolari' by A Chiuchiu, M.C. Fazi and R. Bagianti (c)1983 Edizioni Guerra. The introduction is in English and Italian. All major verbs, including scuotere, are given full treatment including the pronouns associated with them. Impersonal examples, including parere, feature the indirect object pronouns mi, ti gli etc. Another major plus is that all the irregular parts are in bold print, so a pattern begins to emerge that a lot of italian verbs are regular except in the Past Historic/Anterior tense. The Italians call this tense the Passato Remoto and which is spoken extensively from Rome southwards.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I like this verb book very much; very useful so far., 11 Jan 1999
By A Customer
This is a good little verb book. There are 200 verbs fully conjugated and a list of 3,000 more which refer to particular conjugated verbs as models. This is a good book for the price and includes examples of how these verbs might be used in typical speech, phrases, idiomatic expressions and it lists words sharing the same origin as the verb.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Does the job., 10 Jun 2007
As mentioned below there are a couple of omissions which are included in other publications, however, this is a slim book which covers the basics in a clear structure. The success of this book depends on how you use it. If you are a serious scholar of Italian you may want something more substantial, if you range from a beginner to intermediate and you need a handy reference on your desk then this is the book for you. The introduction is concise and easy to undersatnd without being patronising, the auxilliary verbs are well covered, the actual layout of each page is good and the best feature is the small assortment of phrases and words derived from each verb in question. This feature at the bottom of each page puts things into context and allows for a better understanding not just of the verbs, but of the language as a whole. I strongly recommend this book to those of you who have any other books from the series, if you use them all together your progress will be swift.
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