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

It is a good way to undestand the italian daily, in a rough way. Differently from the romantic and ideal side...the other way to understand how italians are in their daily and how they may behave under non-normal situation. This spontaneity is more likely the daily than the "il libro è sopra la tàvola", which is tought in school.

You may or may not want to use some of these words when speaking Italian, but they can be definitely useful to understand. As for the comment of the previous reader that Italian has been standardized (all that this means is that the same Italian is taught in schools throughout Italy) and that now there should be no more idioms from Napoli - the dialects are still alive and well and used by people in their own regions and so are "idiomatic expressions" in those dialects. If you speak standardized Italian in Calabria, they'll sure understand you, but you may not understand them if they choose to speak Calabrese among themselves.

If you really want to learn Italian slangs and get nasty you need to get this book.

I have never studied Italian but I have studied French and thought I would have a fairly easy time learning street Italian with the help of this book. I am happy to report that I was correct . I still have not been to Italy since I read MERDA but I have been to New York City's Little Italy several times where I tried out what I learned from Delicio's book and did I have a good time! I cannot recommed this book highly enough as I know of no other language manual that is so much fun as well as effectively instructive.

very funny & informative esp for a beginner like myself. I read it all the time.