Merde!: The Real French You Were Never Taught at School

A lot of people try to avoid learning swear words in other languages. I don't understand why. These words are part of the language, and you shouldn't avoid them because they make you feel bad. Barry Farber and A.G. Hawke say in their books that you shoud avoid learning profanity in other languages. I say you should as long as you avoid SAYING them. Just KNOW them. I discuss this in my new book below.


Brandon Simpson

These phrases will go over really well at my Alliance Francaise meeting! I can't wait to join the French conversation group.

We are taught such prissy French in school or language courses, this is real world and very helpful. French movies are more understandable, too.

Contains lots of slang and is very thprough. I tend to agree with other reviewers however, this should be treated essentially as a vocab book, since no converstions are really present. If you want to see how slang is used in conversation, perhaps StreetWise French by Ian Pickup and Rod Hares and/ or the Dictionary of Colloquial and Slang Expressions by Struth are better choices. That said this book is fun to read and does provide exercises for you test your knowledge. If you study this book and apply it correctly you wil become la gosse legume avec ton amis francais!

This book does contain lots and lots of slang words well arranged in categories. Somewhat lacking are examples of how these words are used. This should be treated as a vocabulary book rather than a book to learn to speak and understand slang. It is hard to learn to speak the real french from a book containing list of words. For that, one will have to pick up an audio tape and books containing dialogs.