Samuel Ghelli,A Reference Grammar of Contemporary Italian for English Speakers

Reviewed by: Annamaria Monaco, Suffolk County Community College, USA

As stated in the title, this is a reference grammar book, written primarily for English-speakers learning Italian as a foreign language. It can also represent a great review tool for teachers of Italian, looking for concise and clear explanations on both simple and more complex grammar structures, with great attention to fading and emerging linguistic trends. The book contains every imaginable aspect of Italian grammar and, if used as a reference grammar tool, it can quickly solve many uncertainties that all students of the Italian language might have about specific grammar structures, punctuation, and phonetics. In fact, it contains a complete overview of grammatical terms and parts of speech, and of how they work together in the Italian language, as well as spelling and pronunciation rules. Formal discourse is distinguished from informal, everyday usage, and regionalisms are also indicated where appropriate. Even though the book is comprehensive, it is nevertheless lucid and accessible. The book combines traditional and function-based grammar in a single volume. With a strong emphasis on contemporary usage, all grammar points and functions are richly illustrated with brief and clear examples followed by an English translation. The book provides students, teachers, and others interested in the Italian language with a comprehensive, accessible, and jargon-free guide to the forms and structures of Italian. Each of the 23 chapters of the book deals with forms, meanings, and uses of Italian grammar, thereby helping learners grasp the linguistic system of Italian grammar.

As the reader progresses through the book, a great deal of attention is given to verbs, including use of moods and tenses as well as irregular verbs and special verb constructions. Regular and irregular verbs are presented together, so that learners can better notice all the differences and compare and differentiate regular and irregular conjugations. All the material is presented by using the ‘compare and contrast’ approach, aiming to describe in detail and explain the ways in which Italian and English grammar and sentence construction differ from each other. Stating that the book is focused exclusively on grammatical and phonetic explanations might be erroneously interpreted as a negative aspect. In fact, most current foreign language-teaching philosophies follow mainly a communicative methodology where great importance is given to all strategies that enhance learners’ speaking skills. However, there is no doubt that learning a language means also being able to understand and eventually use specific grammar structures and nuances. The book centers on the idea that learning Italian grammar will enable students to understand how sentences are constructed, to become independent learners, and to be able to learn the language more quickly and more efficiently. Students will not only be able, through each chapter, to find all structures of the Italian language, but they will also be given many opportunities to look at how to use the given constructions. In fact, throughout the book there are several examples where the introduced topic will be applied in a clear and short sentence.

I would not suggest this book be used as the only tool in learning Italian but instead, as its title states, as a reference grammar book. For instance, it would represent a helpful tool in answering and clarifying many questions that beginner students usually have, such as knowing whether to use ‘avere’ or ‘essere’ in a compound tense, or how to change the endings of nouns to pluralize them. At the same time, more advanced students could use this book to get a better understanding on how and when to use the subjunctive and to familiarize themselves with hypothetical constructions. One of the user-friendly aspects of this book is that useful information can be found quickly and easily. For instance, the index and chapter headings have clear titles, and in the beginning of each chapter there is a brief definition of the grammar topic that will be treated, followed by concise sections containing both grammar explanations and examples. All these characteristics make the book an excellent detailed reference guide to modern Italian. It is indeed a well-written and well-structured book.