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
