Italian Conversations for Beginners

The barman looks at you and says "Prego?" Forty everyday conversations in Italian, with the English right under every line, so the next one does not catch you out.

This book is for adult learners with a few months of Italian behind them, from an app or a class, and a trip booked or Italians to talk to. You recognize words, but when a real Italian speaks, the lines come fast and in an order you have never seen. What you have rarely been shown is a whole exchange: what people actually say, in the order they say it, and the reply you get back. At the end you will be able to follow everyday conversations on the page and rehearse your side of them aloud. Read it in the weeks before a trip to Italy, or beside a course you have already started.

What's inside:

• 40 dialogues, five to a chapter, in eight chapters. The contents list all forty by title, so you can count them before you start.
• Situations you will meet. A taxi from the station, the keys to the flat, a SIM card, bread at the bakery, bus tickets at the tobacconist, a table for two, the check, a hundred grams of ham, "I'm allergic to walnuts", a train ticket, the ticket inspector, the bus stop, the museum, the pharmacy, the post office, a haircut, dinner at a neighbor's, and a goodbye.
• The English under every Italian line of every dialogue. Italian in bold, English in italics right underneath. No "translate it yourself".
• A1 to A2, named dialogue by dialogue. Each dialogue states its level and quotes the Council of Europe framework line it practices. The first chapters are short exchanges in the present tense; from Chapter 6 Anne starts telling people what she did, in the past tense.
• One story, four people. Anne Walker, a retired American teacher, spends three months in a flat in Bologna and meets the same three Italians again and again: Rita across the landing, Luca at the bar downstairs, Giulia from the pottery class. You see when Lei turns into tu, and why.
• After every dialogue, the same three things. Keep these: six to eight phrases to take with you. How Italians say it: one short note on a habit or a trap for English speakers. Check yourself: three questions, 120 in the book.
• Answers you can check against the text. The answers sit at the end of each chapter, one tap away and one tap back. Each third answer is Anne's own words, copied exactly from the dialogue.
• How to say it, without audio. The book has no audio and does not promise any. A section on reading Italian aloud shows how to sound out a word from its letters, and in the phrase lists a word stressed before its second-to-last syllable has its sound spelled out: SAH-bah-toh for sabato.
• A Phrase finder at the back. All forty situations from A to Z, each with the phrase you will need, for the day the train comes before the trattoria.

How to use it: one dialogue a sitting: read the Italian with the English covered, read it aloud, then answer three questions. A commute or a lunch break is enough.

Who it is not for: it is not for readers who have never seen a word of Italian, and not for readers already past A2. It is not a grammar: it is what you read beside a course, or after one.

The author, Marco Riminesi, is a native Italian speaker. Every piece of the book was read and corrected in independent reading passes before publication.

Go down to the bar with Anne, and have your answer ready.