Books Italian in 10 Minutes a Day® (10 Minutes a Day Series)
Books and Publications Average Rating:

Rating: - Loved the stickers
One of the "gimmicks" of this book is that it comes with stickers you can place on objects around your house, labeling them in Italian. It may sound silly, but it works. I will never forget what to call the door, the mirror, the cat (okay, he's not really wearing a sticker), or dozens of other common items around the house. Writing a word or phrase over and over again and repeating it out loud may seem like tedious exercises, but there is a reason why these kinds of drills are used in schools throughout the world. Writing and saying words is an effective way to reinforce them. The pronunciation guide is helpful, although its weakness is that it does not tell you which syllable gets the emphasis. This book is a terrific way to get started, but you will also need some kind of audio course, or a live teacher, to master the sound of spoken Italian.

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Rating: - Look Elsewhere
The book makes every attempt to be fun and easy, but once you get past its kindergarten feel with multitudes of colorful pictures, large type, double spacing and clutter, you'll begin to notice its shortcomings.

Most of the book consists of predominantly English text with Italian words substituted for some of the English words. Aside from giving the false impression that speaking Italian is just a matter of plugging Italian words into an English sentence, this practice gets very old very fast. You are introduced to the word "Lei" (singular polite version of "you") early in the book, and from that point on every single instance of "you" (and there are lots of them) is replaced with "Lei". The fact that pronouns are typically omitted in Italian emphasizes the inappropriateness of this approach.

The book includes a pronunciation guide for Italian words. However, the pronunciation guide doesn't indicate the stressed syllable. Given that Italian is highly phonetic, and that stress is one of main unknowns in Italian pronunciation, this omission renders the pronunciation guide practically worthless.

Don't bother trying to find the book's index in Amazon's "Look Inside". The book doesn't have an index. It does however have a page at the end plugging the author's other publications. I suppose it's a matter of priorities.

For some reason the verb tables are missing the "tu" (singular informal "you") and "voi" (plural "you") conjugations. I am guessing an attempt at simplification is the reason, but as long as you are looking at a verb's root and five conjugations, would it kill you to look at a couple more?

The book attempts to compensate for its lack of substance with a couple of gimmicks. On the bottom of most pages you'll find the so called free words. These are Italian words that are similar to their English counterparts. Well, you still have to remember the fact that a particular word is similar to an English word and the details of how it differs from the English word, so while you may argue that these words are in the low cost category, they are definitely not free. Further, some of the supposedly free words bear little resemblance to English. Would you have guessed that "scala" means "staircase"? You definitely need to cough up a few bucks for that one.

Another gimmick consists of a few sets of stickers with Italian words on them with which you are meant to label common items. The idea is that as you encounter theses stickers every day, the words will be permanently imprinted in your memory. I wasn't sure where to put the "i jeans" sticker. The book suggests using your imagination. After using my imagination for a while, I imagined several better ways to build my vocabulary.

I have a few introductory Italian books, and most of them are pretty good. This one doesn't deserve to share shelf space with any of the others. You can find much better alternatives for the same investment of time and money. I don't know where the glowing Amazon reviews came from. Friends and family come to mind.

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Rating: - Great intro
This is an excellent intro to Italian for the person who wants the basics for a vacation to Italy, or perhaps as a starting point for someone who wants to go on to study Italian more seriously. The idea that you are only to spend 10 minutes a day is reassuring for those of us with busy schedules...as someone else said, you actually end up spending more time with the book every day because it is fun...but knowing that my "commitment" is for ten minutes makes it easier for me to pick the book up at the end of a long day at work. The brevity of the exercises makes it perfect for those times when you have a few minutes to spare (e.g., waiting for a friend to show up). I also liked the sticky labels and the pocket guides.

In general, this book is very strong in teaching a lot of good vocabulary, but I found it a bit weak in teaching structure. (Keep in mind that I am only about half way through it, though!) I am discovering that I have learned a lot of great vocabulary, but except for some basic phrases (Where is the...? Here is the...), I am not able to produce a lot of complete sentences. Again, the phrases the book DOES teach are useful for travelers, but not necessarily helpful for someone wanting to make casual conversation with an Italian speaker. Also, though they do a great job teaching how to pronounce the different consonants and vowels, they don't talk much about where to place the stress in multisyllabic words. My Italian friends frequently corrected me because I've placed the stress on the wrong syllable (interference from Spanish, probably).

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Rating: - A great book to begin your Italian langauge studies
If you have little or no knowledge of the Italian language, this book is a great place to start. It will take you through all of the basics and prepare you for further studies. However, it will not teach you everything you need to know about Italian. It's only a nice introduction to the language.