Wicked Spanish

I read this after learning some Spanish from Peruvian co-workers. It would be safe to say that the Peruvians taught me nothing useful and some very exotic terms. In reading this I was expecting something similar. That isn't what I got. Things you won't find here: cussing and some real native (to one or two countries) expressions. Oh and in case you haven't picked up on it, this is not meant to be a pocket guide to the language. This is a humorous phrase book. What you will find is a humorous English guidebook to Spanish culture. Every two pages you are given a paragraph write up on some aspect of culture and then a sample dialog. These are hilarious. Some sample phrases pulled from the book: "What lies motionless under the spicy chocolate sauce?" "Can't you see I'm a gringo?" "These look delicious... How much for one/two/half a kilo?" and "Actually, sending letters into the Void is one of my hobbies." Somehow I liked this less than I did other books in the Wicked (insert language here) series. I think maybe there are too many Spanish speaking cultures to do an accurate parody of them. Factors like political instability, cocaine and hygiene issues are big points for some countries but not universal. All of these issues make for a joke somewhere, but there isn't a focused target for parody as there is for say, Wicked French. If they did pick a focused target it was fat wool clad women, but hello have you seen Telemundo. All the women are hot and the men are all disgusting with hair growing from weird places - and they all have mustaches. The jokes are funny, but Spanish is such a widespread language that the humor skips all over the place. Also since Spanish is so widespread the book is limited from giving a translation that would only work in some of the countries in question. I don't speak Spanish, but I can pick through it and I didn't see any idioms here. I am sure that the Spanish is accurate, but these are phrases that you could translate with a dictionary. I don't think you will find any slang here. If you get this book do it for the parody of hispanic cultures. This whole series is good clean fun.

I bought this in the airport on the way to Chile. I laughed out loud many times on the plane & when I met up with co-workers in Santiago, THEY laughed out loud. Rating this on laughs per page, it's not a bargain--it's a steal.

I spent most of an evening laughing reading this book. I recently gave it to a couple of co-workers who went to Peru, one fluent in Spanish, the other who spoke none at all. They each used some of the phrases and made several new friends.