Bescherelle: La Conjugaison Pour Tous (French Edition)
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Book Summary Information
Editor: Frederique HatierEdition: Hardcover
Audio: French (Unknown); French (Original Language); French (Published)
Published: 2006-07-28
ISBN: 2218922622
Number of pages: 300
Publisher: Distribooks Inc
Book Reviews of Bescherelle: La Conjugaison Pour Tous (French Edition)
Book Review: SMALLISH BOOK WITH SHOW-THROUGH PRINT, SHIPPED BY AMAZON IN GROCERY-BAG PAPER.
Summary: 3 Stars
This is not a must-have book. Advanced students may find it useful as a compact reference for a quick lookup, but they probably already have more substantial works, including dictionaries, that cover what is in this overpriced Bescherelle offering.
The attentive student will acquire gradually an intuitive feel for the most common regular and irregular conjugations. When he looks up in a French/English dictionary an irregular French verb unknown to him, he will see usually -- and, often, in bold type -- a reference number that points elsewhere in the dictionary to a conjugation-pattern chart (a collection of which constitutes 1/3 of this Bescherelle book. Another 1/3 is just a simple index of verbs pointing to the conjugation-pattern pages. The remaining 1/3, beginning with «Qu'est-ce qu'un verbe?» / "What Is a Verb?", is covered in most grammar books.). The well-made, decades-old Collins-Robert dictionaries that I own provide such charts and so much more; without clear, carefully selected, illustrative examples of usage, a book of foreign verbs falls flat. Except where a verb happens to be one of the 88 model patterns, looking up a verb in the Bescherelle index leads to the matching conjugation pattern of a different verb, and that is it: There is no definition of the verb or modicum of usage examples. For peculiar verbs, this is particularly unhelpful.
Another sin is that Bescherelle's small-format, hardcover book (half an inch thick and half the size of a sheet of paper) is printed on low-quality, low-opacity paper whose show-through, small-font print makes every page more difficult to read. Compromise the paperback version, not the hardcover. If the Bescherelle book bothered to define each verb briefly (my Barron's "501 French Verbs" does so and also provides a handful of usage examples), the book would be nearly as compact.
To this day, I find my full-size, chintzy-newsprint, decades-old paperback copy of the incomplete, lazily authored Barron's "501 French Verbs" more comforting than Bescherelle's smaller-print, definition-deficient tome: If you are a beginning student, get the "501" now, and save yourself a lot of conjugation grief. A beginner should not have to guess at verb conjugations; faster to use than a big dictionary, the "501," limited as it is, spells out its conjugations, one verb per page, so, the reader sees the conjugation of the verb sought, not a different verb with a matching pattern.
My advice for the advanced student who enjoys a variety of grammar books is to buy a cheaper, used copy of the Bescherelle book, even if it is an older edition. Verb conjugations in French have been static in recent decades, despite the few related spelling reforms, none of which has been adopted widely.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Per Amazon's politically correct, "green" campaign of "Frustration-Free Packaging," my new Bescherelle hardcover was packaged and Ground-shipped in two pieces of Amazon-logo-stamped 13"x13" grocery-bag paper glued together, with the book centered inside of them. As a result, my NEW book is DENTED in several spots. I wonder if Jeff Bezos likes to receive his new purchases with dents in them. I suspect that this lightweight, INFERIOR PACKAGING is more about saving Amazon a few cents than pandering to "green" idiots. No matter: I shall not be ordering any books from Amazon as gifts, knowing that Amazon will nickel-and-dime me by shipping them UNPROTECTED in cheap, craptastic sheets of recycled grocery-bag paper.
Summary of Bescherelle: La Conjugaison Pour Tous (French Edition)
A Bescherelle is a French language grammar reference book best known for its verb conjugations volumes. It is named after the 19th century French lexicographer and grammarian Louis-Nicolas Bescherelle. There are millions of them in Canada. It is often used as a general term, though it is in fact a brand name. The series is made up of three volumes dealing with various aspects of French grammar. The first volume, L'art de conjuguer (The art of conjugation) presents the conjugation of every type of verb in the French language in every verb tense. Each verb type is numbered, so that multiple verbs with identical conjugation (such as chanter and enchanter) can be grouped under one basic verb of that type. L'art de conjuguer also offers all of the rules concerning grammar within verb conjugation as well as a detailed guide on the purpose of each verb tense. The most recent versions contain 12,000 verbs. The second volume, L'orthographe pour tous (Spelling for everyone) explains how to convert spoken sounds in French into writing. The third volume, Grammaire pour tous (Grammar for everyone) is a guide on French syntax, sentence structure, the application of proper grammar to sentences, and punctuation. Each of the three volumes use example sentences to demonstrate proper French grammar. The term Bescherelle is usually used to refer to the first book, L'art de conjuguer.Bescherelles (L'art de conjugeur in particular) are commonly used in French immersion schools and it is often required that students purchase one for class.
Bescherelles also exist for German, English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Arabic and Latin, although they do not have the popularity of the original French.
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