A Reference Grammar of Modern Italian, 2 Edition

I have been using this book for about seven months. It has served me well for the most part. The book has a quality feel for a paper back, using a higher quality paper. It is also organized and indexed well. The topics it covers, it covers in detail and depth, giving several examples. However, it may not be suitable for a beginner or some one that is not strong in grammar. It seems that the author's intended audience is the intermediate to advanced learner. I rated it four stars because it has not contained any information regarding a couple of issues that I have come across in my study of Italian, such as the elision of vowels with prepositional phrases.

My big complaint about this book is that the audience for this book is small at best. This book is for the advanced student who is interested in the nuances and minutiae of the Italian language. I consider myself to be intermediate to advanced, and I found this book to be, dare I say it, pedantic at times. I find that you can learn more about Italian grammar from reading many of the examples that they use, some of which are drawn from Italian literature. I'm not sure of what the authors intended when they wrote this book nor their audience. You get the sense that the book is written this way on purpose as to be deliberately complicated.

I agree with the previous reviewer who indicated that this wasn't much of a 2nd edition. I would classify it more of a 'reprint'. I was hoping that this second edition would be an improvement over the first edition, but sadly it wasn't. I find the book's organization to be counterintuitive to learning and had hoped that the authors would have revamped the book's organization.

There are some useful sections of the book that I think are invaluable so the book does have some usefulness which is why I gave it 3 stars instead of 1. I just feel that there are better sources out there that communicate this kind of material better.

This review refers to the second edition. It is, in fact, a fairly comprehensive coverage of Italian grammar with many sample sentences. It's index is rather skimpy so it's frequently hard to find things, but all in all, it is a useful addition to your Italian language study. So why one star? It's because this "Second Edition" is virtually identical to the first edition. On the front cover it states it's "fully updated, including a guide to the Internet language". The books are, in fact, word for word identical to page 262. At section 14.20 there is a revision of the section essere vs. avere as an auxiliary verb. This was needed as the first edition was very weak here. Then it again appears identical until the very end of the book where the authors have added a new 4 page chapter on "Register differences in modern Italian Grammar". The bibliography has also been updated. This "guide to the Internet language" I can't even find and it's not listed in the index. So I have no idea what this refers to. So what I'm trying to convey here is that this "update" is so minimal that it hardly merits being called a second edition. So if you own the first edition, don't bother upgrading as it's not worth it and if you want this book see if you can find the first edition at a cheaper price as the two editions are vitually the same.