Jenna Swan

The good sides to Swan’s Learn Italian include an overview of Italians’ customs and habits, a step-by-step guide into different and common life situations, a friendly format that is really easy to understand, and sentences along with their translations in English. Moreover, it touches the alphabet and its pronounciation before tackling other topics such as booking a hotel room, the numbers, the world’s countries, etc.

However, I have found that no grammar was explained. For a book that is about Learning the basics of a new language, there was no grammar, which is a basis for learning Italian as we might stuff our head with pre-made sentences, but if we don’t know the why or how-to, it won’t really help us in the end as we venture into building our own sentences. I also noticed several typos in English and mistakes in Italian! Yes, you have read well. In a guide to learning Italian, there are mistakes. For example, it is written ‘’É’’ instead of ‘’È’’, ‘’succhero’’ instead of ‘’zucchero’’,etc. It changes the pronounciation and meaning of what you want to say. Now that’s not really helpful, is it?

Overall, it is a fine book if you are looking for cultural notes and vocabulary lists to improve what you already know. However, the lack of grammar and mistakes almost make it useless for learners as they don't really teach the basics to the language and they teach the wrong pronounciation and writing of the words, and you never know where they might hide. For that reason, I give it a 3 out of 5 rating.

I received the book for free, through Reading Deals, in exchange for an honest review.… (mehr)