Pronounce It Perfectly in Italian (Pronounce It Perfectly)

Rating:
Summary: Good for anyone who learns from books only
Review: This book comes with two cassettes. The two cassettes contain the entire text of the book, which means all the explanations and instructions in English, plus the Italian words. The text works systematically through all the vowels, double and triple vowels, and all the consonants, explains how they differ from English sounds, shows in drawings how to place your tongue for each of the sounds and then brings 5 or 6 Italian words as examples. The speaker pronounces each of those words, you repeat after the speaker, then the speaker pronounces them a second time. At the end of each lesson, you learn whole sentences. Although you are supposed to repeat them again after the speaker, there is not enough time to do so, at least with most of them, which makes that part more of a listening exercise.

You can listen to those cassettes on a simple walkman, but if you need to find and practice a particular session, a cassette recorder that allows you to mark and easily find individual sessions, would be better.

If you use an audio course like Pimsleur, you probably won't need these pronunciation cassettes. You get all the correct pronunciation from the CDs. If you learn from books only, the pronunciation cassettes will be very useful. They provide a good overview of Italian sounds.

I would have preferred it had they omitted the English text on the cassettes and concentrated on the exercises. But otherwise, I liked the course.

Rating:
Summary: Pronounce it really right
Review: This is a concise little book which really teaches you how to pronounce Italian. It gives you a foundation to build on. Italian pronunciation follows rules but can be tough. Can you really say ghiacco? You need to in Italy becuase they don't put it in the glass. This book takes you through dipthongs, triphongs etc and at the end you really have an essential skill to learn Italian. Start here and then start listening to tapes and reading stuff.