Customer Reviews

The Polish-English Dictionary of Slang and Colloquialism

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Learn all the phrases your parents will never teach you! Great for people who want to learn all the "off the street" phrases in Poland. Do not look for words such as "potato," "grandma," or "grandpa." This dictionary contains exactly what the title says- slang. "You'll laugh until you stop."

There is no way to really get to know a culture without knowledge of its idioms and colloquialisms. This book fills a void in colloquial Polish material available for English speakers and is better than many similar slang dictionaries that can be found for the more widely spoken languages. It has phonetics to help with pronunciation, an English index to make the dictionary bi-directional, sample sentences in Polish and English, and two levels of warning for vulgar expressions. Usually only the masculine form of the noun or adjective is given but this is not a detraction except for beginning Polish learners (even so a beginner would be comfortable with this dictionary). The origins of some of the expressions are not obvious for those unfamiliar with Polish culture and some explanation would have been helpful. Also at times too many seldom used English synonyms are provided for a given Polish expression. This might confuse a Polish reader trying to learn English slang. Nonetheless the dictionary is very worthwhile. The book is about 400 pages with over 5,000 entries. Widawski provides us with a true lexical treasure of street talk which had not been systematized this way before.

I thought this was an excellent dictionary, useful for translating modern Polish colloquialisms and the language of the street. A great and useful book.

We were expecting "common Polish phrases" which we learned in our Polish homes and parochial school environments; instead upon perusing the book, we came across "four letter" word combinations not to be shared with the family......Was just looking for the Polish words for "grandfather, father, mother, potatoes"....etc.......Was very disappointed......