Rating: 
Summary: what an ugly book
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Incredibly effective
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Not quite merda
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Absolute Fun
Review: If you are an Italian American like myself, this book will clue you in to some of those 'mystery' phrases your mom murmured between her teeth as she chased a misbehaving you around the kitchen table with her wooden spoon.
Okay---some of the choice expressions in this volume would never have passed between my mother's lips, but nonetheless, the book while sometimes crude, is meant to be an irreverant tome of pure fun.
Take it as such and you will find yourself laughing at its sheer audacity! If anything, it deciphers some of 'the Soprano's' saucier interjections!
Rating:
Summary: Merda! Great book
Review: If you really want to learn Italian slangs and get nasty you need to get this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Salacious argot of Italian
Review: MERDA is an entertainment, an innocent, prurient jape, not a book to give to a friend who is studying Italian seriously and respectably--unless that friend is naughty by temperament. My mother tongue is English, not Italian, so there may be a few awkward locutions in the Italian text of MERDA, though I did grow up bilingual under the tutelage of a Tuscan mother and grandmother. The few verbal gaffes will not impede the reader's progress who wishes to learn the salacious argot of Italian. Though my phrases may not always be precisely the idioms of Naples or Lecce, they definitely will be understood by all Italians. Any question of dialects is cleared up on page VIII of the Preface of MERDA. Every Italian knows that Dante converted Tuscan into the Italian language. I have received many compliments from readers American and Italian-American, particularly women who are grateful for Chapter VIII. The book has been selling briskly since 1993 and is now readily available.
Rating:
Summary: 13th Century Tuscan is not like present day Italian
Review: Mr Delicio in his comments state that "Every Italian knows that Dante converted Tuscan into the Italian language." Well, I am sure he won't be able to read the Divina Commedia in an edition without extensive notes. In any case, the errors are misleading and there is a lot of them, I just wonder why, now that is known, somebody knowlegeble in standard Italian cannot review the book and correct its *many* mistakes. I did not understand the remark about the "idioms" of Lecce and Naples, I assume the author knows Italian is the official language in those cities also, or he doesn't?
Rating: 
Summary: This Book Is Funny
Review: This book does have grammatical errors. In fact, I think a lot of the words were created by the author. However, this book is absolutely hilarious. If you are at all interested in learning the Italian language do not buy this book. If you are at all interested in learning how to say some of the stuff (too nasty to print here) in this book in a different language than buy this book. Have fun with it.
Rating:
Summary: This Book Is Funny
Review: This book does have grammatical errors. In fact, I think a lot of the words were created by the author. However, this book is absolutely hilarious. If you are at all interested in learning the Italian language do not buy this book. If you are at all interested in learning how to say some of the stuff (too nasty to print here) in this book in a different language than buy this book. Have fun with it.
Rating:
Summary: Very useful, very amusing, very racy!
Review: This book is NOT to be left in the presence of minors and/or elders who's wrath you don't wish to incur. Chock full of epithets dealing with bodily functions and fluids, as well as dialogue that would make a hardened sailor blush, this book relentlessly and humourously fills the gaps that formal language instruction leaves out of slang. It also gives insight into the world-reknowned Italian ability to sweetly insult someone within an inch of their life without uttering a single word that would get one into trouble in the most formal of company. Highly recommended, but don't read this when you're eating. :)
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