Customer Reviews

The Big Red Book of Spanish Idioms: 12,000 Spanish and English Expressions

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
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As frequent Amazon reviewer Erugifog mentions in his list of Spanish reference books, there are a number of entrants in the field of Spanish-English idiom guides. He recommends Eugene Savaiano's "2001 Idioms/2001 Modismos" but also advises shopping around. I found that to be good advice.

Peter Weibel is the latest author to throw his hat into this specialty ring, and I consider his "Big Red Book of Spanish Idioms" the prohibitive leader of the pack at this point. With 12,000 idioms (4,000 in Spanish; double that in English), "Big Red" gets the nod simply because it is newer and, well, purports to have more idioms than any of its other serious rivals. Read the publisher's description and you'll get a good (and accurate -- truth in advertising, how refreshing!) feel for what this book has to offer. I was tempted to give it a five-star rating but changed my mind because I don't think it completely overshadows Savaiano's book. Both are reliable and useful references; if used in tandem, they complement each other very well. But if, for whatever reason, you want only a single reference book of this type, make it "Big Red."

Also, be advised that in at least two places (the front cover and again in the introduction), "Big Red" identifies itself as a book for intermediate or advanced learners. For the most serious students of Spanish idioms and slang, "Diccionario del Argot: El Sohez" by Delfin Carbonell Basset is a safe bet. Unlike "Big Red", it is monolingual. Both books are published by McGraw Hill. But what really struck me as coincidental is, both Weibel and Carbonell state that their inspiration for writing their respective books was the Nobel Prize-winning Spanish author Camilo Jose Cela. Even if you're not trying to decipher Cela's slang-riddled, idiom-filled prose, however, "The Big Red Book of Spanish Idioms" can prove invaluable in your times of need.

I bougth this book to help some friends to learn spanish, it is very good. Thanks. I recomend it to students that are trying to know more about the language..

Great book to have on hand where you have a ton of Spanish idioms in one location to review/study/learn.

I got this book as a Kindle download, but in the end had to get the paper edition instead. Reference books you want to flip through are not the best choice for Kindle. Also, the book was apparently digitized with a scanner and little proofreading because accented characters show up all sorts of strange ways.

For example "más" with an accented "á" shows up in the text in various ways like: "mas", "m6s", "m3s", "mOs", among others. "está" often shows up as "est6", and so on.

Needless to say you can't search for phrases with those words because "más" won't match "m6s", and also the keyboard does not support Spanish characters anyway, so searching is out of the question.

Save yourself a lot of difficulty and get the paper edition.

Length:: 0:39 Mins

I'm Natalia Vélez. Your Spanish instructor from eLearnSpanishOnline where I give free video Spanish lessons using my proprietary immersion system.

The Big Red Book of Spanish Idioms is a very interesting book to read. This book is intended to be read by students, travelers and language-lovers. According to the book's author, this book has over 4,000 commonly used idiomatic and colloquial expressions in Spanish and close to 8,000 English translations.

In addition to a Spanish-English dictionary, this book also has an English-Spanish dictionary so that you can easily find the Spanish equivalent of any English expression.

This book includes humorous expressions, figurative expressions, slang, proverbs, and many other types of expressions. I even found several vulgar expressions. Some of the common expressions that you will find in this book are:

Por si las moscas
Ser un diamante en bruto
Ser el ombligo del mundo
Poner los cuernos a alguien
Hacer de tripas corazón

Although I would not recommend this book for anyone who only has a beginner's level of understanding Spanish, both intermediate and advanced students will find this book helpful and interesting.

This dictionary is an excellent reference. It's rare not to find an expression in here. However, I personally find it hard to understand at times because some translations are grouped together and you can't tell if you're still reading the translation or if it's moved on to another expression.

I am a translator and this book is a great help to me. The content of the book will help you with those phrases you would have to be a native speaker to know. It's the inside scoop to Spanish idioms and you need this book!!

It is nice to compare English and Spanish idioms and learn them along the way. A very nice selection. I always finger through the book whenever I want to relax for a while and get away from specialist literature that I normally must read. Very good read and very good buy :))

My wife and I have been studying Spanish for several years and use the Big Red Book of Spanish Verbs almost daily. I thought this would be a good addition but, in truth, it just sits on the shelf. Maybe I just haven't taken the time to figure out how it works, but I rarely find what I'm looking for when I pick it up. I guess I can say it's not like a dictionary.