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Grammar book for the Romance languages | ||
Tags: Grammar books | Romance Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| labelette Newbie United States Joined 4977 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Studies: Spanish, English* | Message 9 of 15 22 April 2011 at 1:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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I just purchased A Comparative Grammar of the French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese
Languages by Edwin A. Notley through a third-party seller on Amazon.co.uk. If someone can confirm that it is indeed in the public domain (published in 1868 by Trübner & Co, London), I will happily scan/retype it and make it available online. I've also bought A Comparative Practical Grammar of French, Spanish & Italian by Oliver Heatwole, but I have yet to receive it and I believe it is still under copyright anyway. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| seldnar Senior Member United States Joined 7133 days ago 189 posts - 287 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, French, Greek | Message 10 of 15 22 April 2011 at 3:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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There's a French book called Comprendre les langues romanes du français à l'espagnol, au portugais, à l'italien &
au roumain Its a pretty decent book. I haven't actually used it yet, but I bought it while on a visit to Paris because it had been discussed in these forums. The publisher/bookstore is Chandeigne. They have a little store not terribly far from the Pantheon that sells only books about Portugal and Portugal-related topics. Someone mentioned a Mario Pei book. His book The Story of Latin and the Romance Languages might be useful, although I suspect it could very easily be too simple. Edited by seldnar on 22 April 2011 at 3:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BartoG Diglot Senior Member United States confession Joined 5448 days ago 292 posts - 818 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin, Uzbek | Message 12 of 15 23 April 2011 at 6:46am | IP Logged | ||
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Fredrik Bodmer's Loom of Language has content along these lines. Drawbacks: It's old, and it's focused on speaking "well enough," not perfectly. On the upside, it shows connections among the Romance (and Germanic) languages nicely.
Online, it's worth your time to take a look at: http://www.romanicaintercom.com/ It's devoted to developing reading knowledge in multiple Romance languages. Far from perfect, but lots of contrastive tables and a fair count of example sentences. The site is a pain to navigate though. I think the big problem is that while the Romance languages lend themselves to being studied together at the beginning stages, the more advanced you get the more you run the risk of speaking the different languages like translations of each other, rather than independent idioms. Finding a structure in Spanish that's just like Italian only one uses the subjunctive and the other the conditional or whatever may tell you how to use your Italian to make learning Spanish easier, but it won't tell you the type of phrasing a native Spanish speaker would turn to reflexively to express the thought. I see this a lot with Spanish speakers learning French who use the reflexive way too often, to take an example at random. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| labelette Newbie United States Joined 4977 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Studies: Spanish, English* | Message 13 of 15 23 April 2011 at 10:23am | IP Logged | ||
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I'll check out that French book too. Thanks seldnar!
I believe I've come across that Romanica site before, but gave up on it because it's so hard to navigate. The page size isn't quite right and I never noticed the Index links at the bottom before now. Thanks for the reminder about it. Any leads on a comparative book for Germanic languages? Edited by labelette on 23 April 2011 at 10:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| etracher Triglot Groupie Italy Joined 5335 days ago 92 posts - 180 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish Studies: Modern Hebrew, Russian, Latvian | Message 14 of 15 23 April 2011 at 2:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have a text that I downloaded called
EuroComRom - The Seven Sieves: How to read all the Romance languages right away The book is focused on reading, as the title says, plus it doesn't go too deeply into grammatical questions, so it might not be what you are looking for. It basically focuses on common vocabulary, sound changes from one language to another and deduction. It is very much learner focused and not too technical. If I remember right I paid something like six euros for the download. They also have Slavic and Germanic material available, I think. I found it useful, but I would love to find a deeper, but still learner-focused, rather than linguist-focused, comparative study of verbal systems in the Romance languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JW Hexaglot Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/egw Joined 6123 days ago 1802 posts - 2011 votes 22 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Luxembourgish, Dutch, Greek, Italian | Message 15 of 15 23 April 2011 at 3:20pm | IP Logged | ||
I've read it and can recommend it. It's very well written and laid out with tables comparing and contrasting the languages. There is a nice preview of this book available here: Comprendre les langues romanes Also, check out the following link. There appear to be some interesting titles here as well: link 1 person has voted this message useful |
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