Spanish is one of the great European languages, rich in heritage from its more
than nine centuries of existence. This is the language that comes from the
region of Spain that English-speakers call Castile. As Christopher Columbus
and other Spanish explorers came to the New World, Spanish became the lan-
guage of all the peoples from Florida to Tierra del Fuego (with the exception
of Brazil, where Portuguese is spoken). When you go to places like Argentina,
Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico,
Guatemala, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Costa Rica, Panama, Honduras, or Nicaragua,
you speak in or are spoken to in Spanish. If you visit cities like Santiago de
Chile, Montevideo, Asuncion, Buenos Aires, Lima, Caracas, Bogota, Mexico
City, Quito, San Juan, and many, many others, the people predominantly speak
Spanish. And when you speak their language or even attempt to communicate
with them in their native tongue, you add a richer dimension to your experi-
ence. Some folks say that language can be a barrier. And we believe that by
removing this barrier, you open a world of possibilities.
So you have several good reasons to embrace this beautiful language. You
may want to understand the culture and the people. You may also want your
Spanish-speaking friends and neighbors at home to understand you, in their
own language. So even if your Spanish isn’t perfect, you’ll be appreciated and
encouraged in your attempts to immerse yourself in the Spanish-speaking
world.

Contents at a Glance
Introduction ................................................................ 1
Part I: Getting Started ................................................. 7
Chapter 1: Spanish in a Nutshell ...................................................................................... 9
Chapter 2: Warming Up with Spanish Grammar Basics .............................................. 21
Chapter 3: Getting Started with Basic Expressions ..................................................... 41
Chapter 4: Getting Your Numbers, Times, and Measurements Straight .................. 65
Chapter 5: Speaking Spanish at Home........................................................................... 85
Part II: Spanish in Action ......................................... 111
Chapter 6: Getting to Know You: Making Small Talk ................................................. 113
Chapter 7: Asking for Directions .................................................................................. 127
Chapter 8: Dining Out and Going to the Market......................................................... 141
Chapter 9: Shopping Made Easy .................................................................................. 163
Chapter 10: Going Out on the Town ............................................................................ 185
Chapter 11: Taking Care of Business and Telecommunications.............................. 199
Chapter 12: Recreation and the Great Outdoors ....................................................... 219
Part III: Spanish on the Go ....................................... 237
Chapter 13: Planning a Trip .......................................................................................... 239
Chapter 14: Dealing with Money in a Foreign Land ................................................... 249
Chapter 15: Getting Around: Planes, Trains, Taxis, and More ................................. 261
Chapter 16: Finding a Place to Stay ............................................................................. 283
Chapter 17: Handling Emergencies .............................................................................. 295
Part IV: The Part of Tens .......................................... 315
Chapter 18: Ten Ways to Pick Up Spanish Quickly ................................................... 317
Chapter 19: Ten Things Never to Say in Spanish ....................................................... 321
Chapter 20: Ten or So Favorite Spanish Expressions ............................................... 325
Chapter 21: Ten Phrases That Make You Sound Fluent in Spanish ........................ 329

Part V: Appendixes .................................................. 335
Appendix A: Mini-Dictionary ........................................................................................ 337
Appendix B: Verb Tables .............................................................................................. 365
Appendix C: On the CD.................................................................................................. 383
Appendix D: Answer Keys ............................................................................................. 385
Index ...................................................................... 391

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Tags: for dummies, spanish

 

I don’t believe in God, but I miss Him. That’s what I say when the question is
put.  I asked  my  brother,  who  has  taught  philosophy  at  Oxford,  Geneva,  and  the
Sorbonne, what he thought of such a statement, without revealing that it was my own.
He replied with a single word: “ Soppy.”
The person to begin with is my maternal grandmother, Nellie Louisa Scoltock,
née Machin. She was a teacher in Shropshire until she married my grandfather, Bert
Scoltock. Not Bertram, not Albert, just Bert: so christened, so called, so cremated. He
was a headmaster with a certain mechanical  dash to him:  a motorcycle-and-sidecar
man,  then owner of a Lanchester,  then,  in retirement,  driver of a rather pompously
sporty Triumph Roadster,  with a three-person bench seat  in front,  and two bucket
seats when the top was down. By the time I knew them, my grandparents had come
south  to  be near  their  only  child.  Grandma went  to  the Women’s  Institute;  she
pickled and bottled;  she plucked and roasted the chickens  and geese that  Grandpa
raised. She was petite, outwardly unopinionated, and had the thickened knuckles of
old age; she needed soap to get her wedding ring off. Their wardrobe was full of home-
knitted cardigans, Grandpa’s tending to feature more masculine cable stitch. They had
regular appointments  with the chiropodist,  and were of that  generation advised by
dentists to have all their teeth out in one go. This was a normal rite of passage then:
from being rickety-gnashered to fully porcelained in one leap, to all that buccal sliding
and clacking, to social embarrassment and the foaming glass on the bedside table.

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Tags: literature, no-fiction, prose

Whether you are too busy to take a class or merely want to supplement your language learning
experience with additional materials, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Learning Italian, Second Edition,
was written specifically for the independent study of Italian.
Any idiot can speak Italian, and lots of them do. The word “idiot” comes from the Greek root
idios and means “of a particular person, private, own.” In Latin, an idiota simply refers to a pri-
vate person. You see this root in the words “idiom” and “idiosyncrasy.”
Beware of the idiots! Lame and suffering from a speech impediment, Claudius (10 B.C.–54 A.D.)
is remembered as a scholar and a competent administrator during the time he reigned. Against
all odds, this “idiot” rose up to become Roman Emperor, making a fool of everyone.
The fact is, you’re not an idiot, or you wouldn’t be reading this book.

Contents at a Glance
Part 1    The Basics 1
1  Why You Should Study Italian 3
Imagine the reality of speaking Italian and see all the reasons.
2  Immerse Yourself 11
Learn about dialect, the history of Italian, and using your dic-
tionary. In addition, there’s a quick grammar refresher to get
your language studies started on the right foot.
3  Sound Like an Italian 25
Learn the basic rules of Italian pronunciation.
4  You Know More Than You Think 39
Tie English and Italian together using cognates.
5  Expressively Yours 53
In this chapter you’ll learn the fundamentals: how to say hello
and good-bye, your days of the week, and idiomatic expressions.
6  Almost Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex 69
In Italian all nouns are assigned a gender—learn what to do
about it.
7  What’s the Subject? 85
Study the different ways of expressing “you” in Italian. Learn
how to determine the subject in a sentence.
Part 2    You’re Off and Running 91
8  An Action-Packed Adventure 93
Learn about the different verb families and regular rules of con-
jugation.
9  Being There 111
See all the different ways of using “to be” with the verbs essere
and stare, and learn how to construct several idiomatic expres-
sions using the verb avere (to have).
10  Tell Me About Your Childhood 129
Learn how to express possession using adjectives and the prepo-
sition di, as well as how to describe things with adverbs.
11  Finally, You’re at the Airport 149
Now that you’ve landed, you’ll be given helpful vocabulary to
enable you to get around. Learn about prepositions and the im-
perative verb tense.
12  Moving Around 165
Drive away with the terms you need to make your journey
safe. Study your numbers to log those kilometers and talk about
time. Also find out how to use the verb fare (to do/to make).
13  Hallelujah, You’ve Made It to l’Hotel 187
Get comfortable inside your room using the practical vocabulary
lists. Express your desires with volere (to want), your potential
with potere (to be able to), and what you’ve got to do with
dovere (to have to).
14  Rain or Shine 205
Talk about the weather, make a date, and discuss your horo-
scope.
Part 3    Fun and Games 221
15  I Can’t Believe My Eyes! 223
See the sights and study the verbs you need to get around and
make suggestions, as well as how to use the present progressive
tense.
16  Shop ’Til You Drop 241
Learn everything you wanted to know about objects and object
pronouns while perusing Italy’s wonderful shops.
17  Bread, Wine, and Chocolate 261
Visit the market and sample the many culinary delights while
improving your linguistic abilities. Express your pleasure with
the verb piacere.
18  Shall We Dine? 281
Chew on the terms and learn how to read an Italian menu and
order special meals. See how reflexive verbs work.
19  Having Fun Italian Style 303
You can sing, dance, and paint the town red with these
terms. Learn how to talk about what you had been doing using
the passato prossimo.
Part 4    Getting Down to Business 323
20  You’re Not Having Un Buon Giorno 325
Cope with life’s little nuisances, get your hair done, and learn
how to make comparisons.
21  Is There a Doctor in the House? 341
Tell the doctor where it hurts with these terms. Learn how to
talk about what used to be with the imperfect tense.
22  Can You Read Me? 355
Make a telephone call, send a package, and write a letter. See
how to use the future tense to talk about what will be.
23  Home Sweet Home 369
In the market to own a home? Want to rent a villa? Talk about
the conditional and learn how to express what you would like.
24  Money Matters 381
Learn the international language of money with these helpful
banking terms. Also learn the subjunctive and past absolute.
Appendixes
A  Answer Key 395
B  Glossary 411
C  Map of Italy 441
D  An Idiot’s Guide to Additional Resources 443
Index 445

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Tags: for dummies, italian, linguistics

 

The Phonology of Italian offers an overview of the main characteristics of Italian
sound patterns under consideration of regional variation and an analysis couched in
the framework of Optimality Theory.
With regard to this goal immediately two questions arise. 1. What is Italian? 2. Why
is there a need for such a book? The first question might be raised by readers who
are aware of the complex linguistic situation of Italy and the Italian language—or
languages, one might say. Section 1.1 will be dedicated to a clarification of this situation.
The second question could be expected from anyone familiar with the literature on
Italian phonology. Italian is by no means an understudied language. It has received
a lot of attention in the linguistic literature, both in the descriptive literature and in
the theoretically oriented literature that seeks to further our understanding not only of
Italian as a linguistic system but of language in general. Thus, one might wonder what
the intended contribution of this book is supposed to be. I will give a more detailed
answer to this in section 1.2. Section 1.3 will give an overview of the book, while
section 1.4 provides guidance on orthography.

C O N T E N T S
Acknowledgements viii
Notation Conventions ix
The International Phonetic Alphabet x
Abbreviations xi
1  INTRODUCTION 1
1.1   Approaching Italian 1
1.2   A rationale 3
1.3   An overview of this book 5
1.4   Orthography 8
2  THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 11
2.1   Optimality Theory 11
2.2   The parallel structures model of segmental representations 17
3  A VERY BRIEF HISTORY OF ITALIAN PHONOLOGY 22
3.1   Latin as a starting point 23
3.2   Major developments on the way from Latin to Italian 25
3.2.1   Changes in the consonantal system 26
3.2.2   Changes in the vowel system 30
3.2.3   Changes in prosodic organization 33
3.3   Explaining historical change 35
3.3.1   Neogrammarian sound change 35
3.3.2   Contrast innovation and fading-out of phonological processes 36
3.3.3   Classical lexical diffusion 39
3.3.4   Rule inversion 42
3.3.5   Summary 42
4  SEGMENTAL PHONOLOGY 44
4.1   The sound inventory 45
4.1.1   Consonants 45
4.1.2   Vowels 50
4.2   Segmental alternations 56
4.2.1   Palatalization 56
4.2.1.1  Alveolar affrication and velar palatalization 57
4.2.1.2   Place features 68
4.2.1.3   Constraint-based analysis of palatalization 73
4.2.2   The status of glides: vowel-glide alternations 84
4.2.2.1   Separating high vowels and glides 85
4.2.2.2  Analysis 91

4.2.3   Vowel neutralization 99
4.2.3.1   Overview 100
4.2.3.2   Representations and derivations of metaphony 104
4.2.3.3   Unstressed vowel reduction and metaphony in OT 111
4.2.3.4   Summary 123
4.3   A feature set for the Italian segment inventory 124
5  SYLLABLE STRUCTURE 127
5.1   Italian onset phonotactics 128
5.2   The rhyme 134
5.2.1   The size of the rhyme 135
5.2.2   The coda condition 137
5.3   Across syllable boundaries 140
5.4   An OT analysis 142
6  WORD STRESS 156
6.1   Overview 156
6.2   Default stress 160
6.2.1   Identifying the problem 160
6.2.2   Nonce-word test method 167
6.2.3   Results 169
6.2.4  Analysis of nonce-word stress patterns 177
6.2.4.1  All light syllables 179
6.2.4.2   Quantity 183
6.2.5   Comments and further refinement 185
6.3   Lexical stress 187
6.3.1   Conflicting stress marks 187
6.3.2   OT analysis of lexical stress 190
6.4   Secondary stress 194
6.5   The domain of stress 197
7  PROSODIC PHONOLOGY 203
7.1   The prosodic hierarchy 203
7.2   Intervocalic s-voicing 207
7.2.1   Overview 207
7.2.2   Formal analyses 211
7.3   Raddoppiamento sintattico 219
7.3.1   The different types of consonant doubling
and their previous analyses 219
7.3.2  An OT analysis of phonological consonant doubling 225
7.3.3   Summary 234
7.4   Vowel deletion 234
7.4.1   Deletion, syntactic structure, and speech rate 235
7.4.2  A unified analysis of deletion 243

7.5   Phrasal stress and focus: phonology and syntax in interaction 249
7.5.1   Overview 249
7.5.2   Phonological and syntactic phrasing 252
7.5.3   Phrasal stress 257
7.5.4   Phrasal stress, focus, and syntactic movement 260
7.6   Conclusions on prosodic phonology 263
References 265
Subject Index 279
Index of Names 285

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Tags: italian, linguistics, oxford, phonetics