Italian All-In-One for Dummies (Paperback)

Introduction 1

Book I: Speaking Italian in Everyday Settings 5

Chapter 1: Exploring Pronunciations and Italian You May Already Know 7

Chapter 2: Dealing with Numbers, Dates, and Time 21

Chapter 3: Buongiorno! Salutations! 41

Chapter 4: Making Small Talk 55

Chapter 5: Casa Dolce Casa: Home Sweet Home 67

Chapter 6: Using the Phone and Talking Business 81

Chapter 7: Food, Glorious Food, and Drink 97

Chapter 8: Shopping, Italian-Style 115

Book II: Exploring and Wandering About 133

Chapter 1: Where Is the Colosseum? Asking Directions 135

Chapter 2: Having Fun Out on the Town 147

Chapter 3: Exploring the Outdoors, Sports, and Hobbies 163

Chapter 4: Planning a Trip 179

Chapter 5: Money, Money, Money 189

Chapter 6: Getting Around: Planes, Trains, Taxis, and Buses 199

Chapter 7: Finding a Place to Stay 215

Chapter 8: Handling Emergencies 223

Book III: Grasping Basic Grammar Essentials for Communication 239

Chapter 1: What Do You Know? Parts of Speech 241

Chapter 2: Noun and Article Basics: Gender and Number 253

Chapter 3: All about Pronouns 267

Chapter 4: Adjectives, Adverbs, and Comparisons 281

Chapter 5: Meeting the Challenge of Prepositions 297

Chapter 6: Demonstrative, Indefi nite, and Possessive Qualifiers 307

Chapter 7: Making Connections with Conjunctions and Relative Pronouns 323

Chapter 8: Asking and Answering Questions 335

Book IV: Mastering Italian Verbs and Tenses 345

Chapter 1: Jumping into Action with Italian Regular Verbs 347

Chapter 2: Talking in the Present Tense with Irregular Verbs 361

Chapter 3: Using Refl exive Forms and the Imperative Mood 375

Chapter 4: Declaring Your Likes (And Dislikes) with Piacere 389

Chapter 5: The Future Tense and the Conditional Mood 403

Chapter 6: Getting into the Subjunctive Mood 415

Book V: Building Compound Tenses 433

Chapter 1: Been There, Done That: Talking in the Past Tense 435

Chapter 2: Refl exive Verbs in the Past 451

Chapter 3: Second-Guessing Actions with the Past Conditional and Past Perfect 461

Chapter 4: I Hope That You’ve Had Fun! The Subjunctive Mood in the Past 469

Chapter 5: “If” Clauses, the Impersonal, and the Passive 477

Chapter 6: Progressing through Gerunds in Italian ...487

Book VI: Appendixes 493

Appendix A: Verb Tables 495

Appendix B: Italian-English Mini-Dictionary 529

Appendix C: English-Italian Mini-Dictionary 545

Appendix D: Fun & Games 561

Appendix E: Audio Tracks 615

Index 619