Comparative Grammar of Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and French: Learn & Compare 4 Languages Simultaneously

I love this. I love it. It is so well-done. I love it. Have I said that I love this?!I am long-time, casual speaker of French and Spanish. I recently decided that I would like to add Italian to my languages, so I started buying teach-yourself-Italian books from Amazon. Its algorithm made note of that and recommended this one to me.Though I have only begun to use it, I find it delightful, informative, effective and full of easy-to-use, yet thorough and detailed information. For someone who wants to learn a new language (Italian) and refresh older ones, it is an exceptional tool. I can't recommend it highly enough

I cannot thank the author enough for writing this innovative book. I always wanted to learn Portuguese, further my French and begin Italian parting from Spanish (my native language). This book does it and puts in context which is one things I like the most about this book. I like the examples used by the author.However, I did find some MINOR mistakes, but the author does point that out at the beginning of the book. I think that humble statement pumps the star count to five. He does not claim to have everything figured out, nor does he claims a secret technique that promises faster learning in less time. No, he does not do so and I like that he is not pretentious about anything. He parts from the premise that one can learn more than one language at the same time. In this case: Romance Languages. This is a true fact, and I did not need a PhD.D. thesis (Which he (author) did and demonstrated that it is indeed possible), to support my opinion, since it is something that can be attested through my own experience. My mum taught me basic French since early age; I also received a bilingual education—English and Spanish—from K to 12—, since I was raised in Puerto Rico (a U.S. Territory).It is incredible how much these three languages are alike. The author uses Castilian Spanish as his reference for Spanish, which came as a nice surprise for me, since this is the one Puerto Ricans/Cubans are more familiar with, because of our common 400-year history shared with Spain. On another note, written Spanish and Portuguese are so similar that the author had to use synonyms for many words that mean the same in both languages. I figure this is a great technique to not make them so alike, and bring that monotonous aspect to a minimum. And this is good, because it builds vocabulary at the same time. However, do not expect to have this book as the one source for your learning, use dictionaries, verb books and other grammar works from each language to enrich the experience as you go along. I've taken my time with the book and have come to gain a lot.The book has many informative nuggets throughout, which, again, I like because those bits make it more fun to read. I definitely recommend this book to any person looking to begin studying the four main Romance languages, spoken by millions around the globe.Btw, if the author is reading this, write another book for Catalan (Català), Galician (Galego), Asturian (Bable), Romanian and/or other minor Romance languages like Mirandese, using Spanish as the backdrop for learning. I think doing so will incentivise people to learn more than just the four "popular" Romance languages and prevent these other languages from dying.

I have been waiting for a book like this for years. Thank you so much for the time it took to pull this together so well.If you know one or two or these languages, the others will come pretty easily.This book sounds scary at first and contains a ton of information. But it is broken down into digestible chunks so you can skim and revisit sections as needed.I know some spanish and italian and bought this to help me learn portuguese. I started the verb section this week and am blown away by the similarities and am now accidentally learning French.I cannot thank you enough for this book and encourage all language geeks / travelers/ descendants of foreign nationals/ humans etc to buy this book now! Wish I had it in college years ago.

While I’m certainly no linguist, I do aspire to be a polyglot. After having muddled through French prior to college (and again in graduate school), it took an attempt at teaching myself Italian and Spanish that disillusioned me re: the idea of studying each Romance language sequentially. There were too many similarities in grammar, idioms, and vocabulary, so the effort felt needlessly duplicative. Therefore, when I saw Dr. Petrunin’s book it was literally an answer to my prayers: a straightforward approach to using those similarities to the language learner’s advantage. I understand that he is now doing the same thing with the West Germanic and Nordic languages, efforts that I’m breathlessly anticipating. This is a great book and certainly worth the while of anyone interested in learning as many of the great Western European tongues as she can. I have two copies as I would not want to be without it.

Love this book, great accomplishment, a must for every scholar of Romance languages whether you know just one or you know more. It's good for language learners too if you already know one Romance language. This may sound superficial but I like the larger type, making it easier to read, but it also may make it a little harder to see the comparisons (as in a compact chart).It's geared toward language learners, so it is not organized for linguistic purposes. I missed seeing the obvious referral to linguistic concepts, but it is easy enough to fill that in yourself.Things I would love to be in it that weren't:- a comparison of sound changes.- a comparison with Latin (in appendix showing how verb tenses, endings etc, change and rearrange)- Even though these are not common -learning- languages, it'd be easy to add in Catalan and Romanian.- a section on vocab where different- false friends, essentially the same word, but has a different meaning.- list of words that have different gender- some tables could be more compact and more comprehensive (especially the reference tables near the back- A section on sentence examples that compare 'how you say it' can be different.Not a problem with this book, but I wish there were such books for Germanic, Slavic, Indic, Dravidian, Bantu, and Chinese. Who's in charge of this? Get on it!

A very comprehensive reference in grammar of the four main Romance languages (Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Italian).