Il nuovo salvalingua

Valeria Della Valle, who was featured recently on Rainews24 talking about Il Vocabolario Treccani, wrote in 2007 an interesting book entitled, Il nuovo salvalingua, with Giuseppe Patota. This is an interesting and wonderfully laid out book that delves into some of the pitfalls that even Italians make with their own language.

The book is laid out like a dictionary...starting with "A" and ending with "Z"...the first chapter giving lessons on using accents and adjectives, problems one encounters with definite articles and other topics. The book ends with an explanation of the noun, il zaffiro (sapphire), and it's correct pronounciation. The rest of the book follows a similar model, and this volume would be an ideal candidate for intermediate and advanced Italian learners, who are seeking to polish their language skills.

In reading the book, there were some "traps" that I realized I never fell into - perhaps because of the way in which I learned the language while others were also common errors that I made. Regardless, you are bound to learn something from this useful work, and I found myself taking notes and learning new things. There were so many useful sections to the book that I find it hard to list them all, however, I caution you that this is not a grammar book in the traditional sense but is applied to correcting common errors of spelling, writing, word/verb usage and more.

The book is written in a very clear and concise style and will not be difficult to understand or comprehend. The author doesn't complicate her explanations and uses tables and lists when needed to illustrate her points.