More Grammar Books!

Today Brandt and I went to Best Buy to get a new camera to replace our old, somewhat broken camera (the thingie that goes over the lens won’t shut anymore). Our old camera was not big, but this one is tiny. It is extremely cute and portable, perfect for roaming around New York City neighborhoods.

Since I was not much enjoying what little remains in my old grammar books—namely, all the stuff that I kept deciding was not all that important and therefore kept putting off—I also bought new grammar books. That way I can spend more time reinforcing the most central grammatical concepts, rather than struggling through grammatical leftovers.

Plus I’ll have more fun.

I got another book of Paola Nanni-Tate’s, this one called Italian Verb Tenses, plus a book on pronouns and prepositions, which is an area I tend to have more trouble with. As I have mentioned, pronouns and prepositions are so bland and generic they are hard to remember. Another of my new books is Barron’s Italian Verb Workbook, by Marcel Danesi.

I spent some time on Danesi’s book tonight. It is a great review for me, but there is one thing about it that is intensely annoying: they do not give anywhere near enough room in the exercises for my answers. Not even close—it’s ridiculous. How and why would that happen? It cramps my answers and also my learning style.

I learned today that Non c’è di che means “Don’t mention it.” I do not at all understand the syntax of that Italian expression. It looks as though it means “There is not of what.”