501 Italian Verbs: with CD-ROM (Barrons Foreign Language Guides) (Italian and English Edition)

Barron's is today and always has been the Number-One reference source for verb usage in virtually every major language. Leading all competition, the best selling 501 Italian Verbs beats all less well-established rivals with its brand-new 3rd edition. It's printed in two colors, it features tinted page edges for ease of reference, and it comes with extra help for Italian language students in the form of a CD-ROM. The book presents the most important and most commonly used Italian verbs arranged alphabetically with English translations in chart form, one verb per page, and conjugated in all persons and tenses, both active and passive. The accompanying CD-ROM gives students practice exercises in verb conjugation plus a concise grammar review. This combined book and software package is a comprehensive guide to Italian verb usage with a wealth of reference material and language tips, including a bilingual list of more than 1,250 additional Italian verbs, helpful expressions and idioms for travelers, and verb drills and short tests with all questions answered and explained.

Customer Reviews:

awesome... totally awesome

By Pike Athens - December 23, 2001

This book is absolutely packed with almost everything a language student could need. As it lists, there are five hundred one verbs, all arranged alphabetically throughout the book. It lists each verb in its seven simple tenses (present indicative, imperfect, past absolute, future, present conditional, present subjunctive, and imperfect subjunctive) and its seven compound tenses (present perfect, past perfect, past anterior, future perfect, past conditional, past subjunctive, and past perfect subjunctive). It has a page on pronunciation of Italian vowels and consonants, and then it goes into talking about how to conjugate the verbs. It begins with showing how to conjugate regular verbs, following this with the Italian translations of each tense's and mood's name. An example conjugation of an English verb is then shown to help illustrate what each tense means. After this comes further explanation of the verbs' tenses and moods, in which it deals with each of the fourteen given... read more

Stress and vowel quality are not indicated

By John-Allen Payne - July 4, 2006

I agree with the reviews below: this is a fabulous collection of verb paradigms for both learning and reference. But a significant flaw is that neither the word stress nor the quality of the stressed vowels are indicated.

The stress on the present tense of italian verbs (and some infinitives) is not predictable from its orthorgraphy and it may appear on either the penult or the antepenult of a verb. Such information is necessary in order for a learner to acquire a correct pronunciation, and it is missing in this book.

Moreover, a stressed "e" or "o" may be pronounced either open or close in Italian verbs in the present tense and in some irregular past-tense and past-participle forms; but in this book, there is no indication of a preferred pronunciation. Such information would be of great intrest to a learner who wanted to develop a native-like accent.

In order to find information regarding verb stress and vowel quality, a learner would need to consult... read more

501 Italian Verbs:Fully Conjugated

By Audrey Mayfield - March 22, 2000

This book was very helpful for the Beginner to Intermediate. A constant source for reference as well as for "pulling together" the thousands of idioms and related vocabulary which is helpful only if you can use the verb correctly. A basic and a must for Italian studenti! I lost my copy to my professor and had to buy another one. A great value.