Merda!: The Real Italian You Were Never Taught in School (Paperback)

~ (Author), Kim Wilson Brandt (Illustrator)
Key Phrases: una puttana, Roland Delicio, The Italian

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

At last, a humorous, uncensored language guide to the colorful slang and rude colloquialisms that are so essential to a true understanding of everyday Italian. For the first time, all those words and phrases that were deemed off-color for the classroom are included in one volume.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Plume (November 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452270391
• ISBN-13: 978-0452270398
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #369,666 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not quite merda, August 2, 2003

By	Eric J. Lyman (Roma, Lazio Italy) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I'll stop short of writing that Merda is a piece of merda, but it is a wasted opportunity.

Italian slang -- especially the kind of colorful slang this book focuses on -- has its roots in history and tradition, and it gives insight into the psychology of a people. It can be very vulgar, but it is also symbolic, metaphoric, and at times even poetic (albeit in a crude way). But instead of focusing on that, Merda is content to be little more than a list of ways to accuse someone of practicing the world's oldest profession, and new methods to refer to defecation in every day conversation. Instead of using insight, it relies on shock value.

Sadly, it also confuses some regional phrases with true Italian, and there are more than a handful of translation errors.

It is true that much of the information contained on the book's pages is difficult to come across without hanging out with i ragazzi after dusk on a street corner in Naples, but it could have been so much more.

Combine those fatal shortcomings with poor quality given its price (it's produced using newsprint between two flimsy covers), and you end up with a product with little to recommend it.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This book is not as good as others in the same series., August 18, 1998

By A Customer

Well, I already had "Mierda: The Real Spanish, etc.", so I decided to buy this one. Italian is my mother tongue, so I bought this book to give it to a friend of mine studying Italian. I had to change my mind. The book is plenty of primary-school-level mistakes that, if you are learning Italian, actually makes the book pretty confusing, and that however aren't acceptable in any instruction book, even though about "bad" words. The vocabulary also is very much "regional" (mainly based on the dialect spoken in Tuscany) and so some of the words won't be understood outside that area. It is a pity, because the book about Spanish is pretty good. The book requires to be thoroughly revised by someone with more familiarity with standard Italian to make it worth even its relatively cheap price.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars what an ugly book, December 14, 2004

By	Cicciopulcino "cicciopulcino" (Grover Beach, CA USA) - See all my reviews

I am italian and I was having a look at the book and I think it is really badly conceived and with so many elementary grammar mistakes. I could find at least 10 errors. For example it is an ELEMENTARY italian grammar rule that the feminine article before a feminine noun gets the apostrophe (un'assatanata) and NOT un assatanata. You say UN'AMICA and not una amica. You san UNO sporcaccione and not un sporcaccione. You say SPUDORATA not spudErata.... Just to mention a few errors... And the translations that he sometimes uses are obsolete: when I see a hunk guy I don't say "uno forte e ben armato" . Give me a break!!!!
Mr Delicio did really a poor job, evidently he doesn't really know the slang language really spoken by italian people.