Gobetti - Practice Makes Perfect Italian Vocabulary

PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT
Italian Vocabulary

Second EditionDaniela Gobetti Copyright 2012 by Daniela Gobetti. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. ISBN: 978-0-07-176097-3 MHID: 0-07-176097-0 The material in this eBook also appears in the print version of this title: ISBN: 978-0-07-176096-6, MHID: 0-07-176096-2. All trademarks are trademarks of their respective owners. Rather than put a trademark symbol after every occurrence of a trademarked name, we use names in an editorial fashion only, and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark.

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This book provides readers with basic Italian words in a variety of fields, and with exercises to practice how those words are used.

It is divided into sixteen units corresponding to as many themes. In each unit words are clustered according to sub-themes, but within each sub-theme I have chosen to list nouns separate from verbs, pronouns, and so forth, rather than list them thematically. Italian is a rule-based, rather than a pattern-based language. Familiarity with grammar rules is therefore indispensable even at the elementary level. While doing the exercises, users are encouraged to keep a grammar book, a verb book, and a dictionary at hand to clarify their doubts. I have clustered together adjectives, adverbs, and phrases that are used to qualify nouns or verbs, because it often happens that a qualifier conveyed by an adjective in English is conveyed by an adverb or phrase in Italian, and vice versa. I have clustered together adjectives, adverbs, and phrases that are used to qualify nouns or verbs, because it often happens that a qualifier conveyed by an adjective in English is conveyed by an adverb or phrase in Italian, and vice versa.

Adjectives and phrases composed of an adjective and a preposition, such as bello(beautiful), grande(large, great), piccolo(small, little), solo(alone) and da solo(alone), da piccolo(as a kid/young boy), da grande(as an adult), etc., must be coordinated in gender and number with the noun to which they refer. Adverbs such as bene (well), velocemente (fast), etc., are unchangeable, as are the complements a disagio(not at ease, uneasy) and di corsa (in a hurry), which are formed of a noun and a preposition. Italian is rich in compound nouns, which can be formed by an adjective and a noun or a noun followed by a phrase (called a complement in Italian) that changes its basic meaning: la malattia tropicale (tropical disease), la barca a vela (sailing boat), la tazza da t (teacup). Only when compound nouns are formed by adding an adjective do the rules of coordination apply: la guida turistica (tourist guide), le guide turistiche (tourist guides). When the context is clear, the adjective or complement used as a qualifier can be dropped. I have listed in square brackets the word that can be omitted: i [pomodori] pelati (peeled tomatoes); le patatine [fritte] (potato chips).

In general, square brackets are used to indicate that the word or words in question can be omitted. I have listed nouns in the masculine, unless the noun happens to be feminine: la guida (guide), la persona (person). The notation (m. and f. / f. and m.) (masculine and feminine / feminine and masculine) means that the word in question can refer to either gender, even if the gender of the word is only masculine or feminine.

Since the masculine is the default gender in Italian, the masculine plural of nouns ending in -a can be used for women as well:

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