A Reference Grammar of Modern French

By Fg Healey, Anne Judge, Frank George Healey

Book Overview

Advanced A Reference Grammar of Modern French is the standard English-language grammar reference for the forms and structures of French as it is used today throughout the French-speaking world. -... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0844216313
• ISBN13: 9780844216317
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill
• Length: 528 Pages
• Weight: 1.63 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.2" x 1.1" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

Le subjonctif --tu piges?

Where and how old was I when I first opened this book? On a bus at age 19? whatever the case may be, it marked a watershed in my learning of French and a growing awareness that French grammar was not simply a different (more complicated) version of English; nor that it was merely about applying rules of use and usage, mechanically and blindly (this is what school does), but, -far more revolutionary for a young mind--a way of being and thinking, hitherto unimagined. This book marked the beginning of an intellectual adventure that has buoyed me since. After years of relatively bleak High school French instruction and a handful of the usual courses of French idiom and grammar at the university (+a French mother and summer childhhoods in France) it was when browsing the section on "le subjonctif" that the central purpose and meaning of the Mood struck me. And, with it, the significance of grammar in general. It could not have otherwise, without this book's comparative/contrastive approach --not only between French and English but also with the variety of grammatical choices that the French draw on as they make relevant, but subjective distinctions in meaning. It is intelligent and well-written and for this reason, distinct. I have not found any other French grammar quite like it since.