Customer Reviews

Street Spanish 1: The Best of Spanish Slang

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I've owned and used this book for a couple of years, and while it is worth the read, if you need to buy one book of this sort I would go with "Streetwise Spanish" by Mary Gill and Brenda Wegmann. While the format of both books is surprisingly similar, I think that "Streetwise" covers more turf, and does it more entertainingly, than "Street Spanish."

Street Spanish 1 is the best book I have come across on Spanish slang. It provides a wide range of phrases and terms not generally found elsewhere, but which a native speaker would normally use when talking to friends or family, or which often crop up in movies and books. In other words, it teaches the real Spanish that is needed to promote a better understanding when conversing with or listening to native speakers.

The dialogues are made up of the most popular slang expressions that are used in various Hispanic countries, allowing their usage to be observed in context while on the facing pages an English translation is provided for easy reference.

The vocabulary section that comes at the end of every dialogue focuses on each slang term and explains its usage even further by means of additional examples, while synonyms, antonyms and variations used in different countries are included to ensure that a thorough grasp of each term is reached. To gain that extra edge, this book is highly recommended for travellers and students alike.

(Having the cassettes, which are not part of the package, would be an added bonus since you would hear the dialogues being spoken by natives of Mexico, Argentina, Peru, and Spain, providing a better feel for the language, its speech patterns and the varying pronunciations).

This is a very mediocre slang book, typical of so many that are written from dictionaries instead of real living experience. Half the words are not slang at all...just examining the pages available for free look you see stuff like tropece, nena, platicar that are ordinary speech. No depth, nothing you don't learn in your SPanish class in Iowa.
Additionally, the Spanish itself is faulty---for instance, donanadie instead of dona nadie with tilda over the n in dona.
Not so hot. Better than that "Forbidden" and "Taboo" crap, but really....not for the serious speaker.

Street Spanish tremendously improved my vocabulary of street slang as well as basic Spanish words. I know more slang than my Hispanic friends! My only problem with this book is that the answers to the quizzes were not always correct and there were a few errors in translations. Besides that, I loved it!

I've learned a lot of vocabulary from this book and it's amusing and well arranged. The fact that many of the expressions are not really 'slang' from the streets but just everyday 'colloquial' doesn't matter to me because they're useful anyway.

On the other hand, as soon as I started using it where I live in Spain people laughed and warned me that many of the expressions in the dialogues are either never employed here or they are out of date. So I still use it, but with caution, and I try the expressions out on Spanish friends before I learn them.

A very helpful book for those wanting to learn how to speak the street Spanish and learn the buzz words. It puts you in the groove to be the hippest of your group. This book is absolutely essential!

Sr. Burke, take a bow! This book, the first of three, is a delight to read. I speak Spanish, so I always recommend his works to students who are making the transition from the basics of grammar and proper usage of "ordinary" language to "real" conversation.

What I really love is the way Mr. Burke has three versions of each dialogue: one in Spanish, one standard English translation and finally, an often hilarious literal English translation that drives home the images evoked by each idiom. Example: in English, we say "you're pulling my leg" but in Spanish we say "you're taking me by the hair."

Before students are ready for his books, and still, often all along the way, they need to do a lot of grammatical housekeeping and review in order to master other bothersome areas of Spanish for English speakers.

Sr. Burke, please keep writing. Ignore the nitpickers.

Sincerely,

Eric W. Vogt, Ph.D.

Heavily infested with comments and explanations in English that constantly distract and do not allow to think in Spanish. I doubt that the author has any formal education in teaching foreign language. This overpriced CD set is worthless. Sorry for this harsh judgment, but from my 20+ year experience of professional translator inability of the author to teach is obvious.

What I like most about this book is that it tells you from which countries the Spanish slang words come from. That way I don't use Mexican Spanish slang when I am speaking to someone from Colombia and vice versa. What I don't like about the Spanish lessons in this book is that it does not come with an optional CD or Cassette in order to make sure that I am learning to pronounce the Spanish slang and Spanish words correctly. I also recommend the mp3 and pdf of the los insultos vulgares that come with the Learning Like Crazy course in Spanish. By using the two of them you should obtain "una boca muy sucia en espanol."

I've had numerous copies of the 501 Spanish Verbs, and of Street Spanish 1 & 2. (now it's time to add #3.)

I've always given them away to other Americans down there in The Jungle By The Sea. I'm ordering a fresh batch of all of them and this time nobody but me gets to use them. *smile*

It's true, you have to know the street talk or the natives go "Ay!" and the merchants charge you triple. I lived in The Jungle By The Sea for almost 4 years. Great place. Great country. Great people. The Mexicans and the Irish seem to have a special bond.