How to Swear Around the World

by Jason Sacher, Toby Triumph (Illustrator)

This essential phrasebook collects the most colorful, explicit, and outrageous ways to tell people off in every part of the world. Featuring dozens of different languages, the sayings range from everyday swears to family curses to expressions for X-rated relations with animals. Phonetic pronunciation is provided so that readers can curse like a native, and handy illustrations provide visual guides to these foreign exclamations. Perfect for the international traveler who may need to wish an enemy a painful death, insult a person's grandmother, or accuse someone's mother of having intimate relations with bears in the forest.

Genres: Nonfiction, Humor, Linguistics, Reference, Language, Travel, Comedy

126 pages, Paperback

First published September 7, 2012

Reviews

[Sesili · Rating 2 out of 5]

Realno je mogao da napravi bolji izbor. :D Ne znam kako funkcionišu psovke po svetu, niti me to specijalno zanima, uzela sam ovo čisto da vidim kako je predstavljen region. I tu nastaje problem jer bivše jugoslovenske republike imaju gotovo identične psovke i ako već planiraš da ih sortiraš po državama, onda bi valjalo da daš neki kontekst a ne da ih samo podeliš kako ti se ćefne. Deluje kao da je lik seo za komp, otišao na dva, tri foruma i pokupio šta mu se svidelo.

Dobra stvar je da može da se pročita u potezu od Karaburme do Novog Beograda, pozdrav za večitog zamenka Vesića.

[Oumaïma (readwithmima) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This has to be the least useful book I read in my entire life. But it is enjoyable and I liked this small detour by swear city.
I would recommend this to all the people who like their "special turns of sentence" and want to own it

[Beth · Rating 1 out of 5]

A lousy read to anyone who enjoys learning about cultures and/or languages. Poorly laid out and inconsistent. This might be okay if it were a bunch of friends sitting around comparing expressions and swear words in languages they might have learned while traveling, but zero support on pronunciation of terms and no consistency with each language offering their version of the swear word. Basically all over the place. Maybe the title got the book published?

[Nicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm feeling sort of cranky, so I felt like learning how to swear. It's kinda fun, if simple and rather single-minded, but hey, I haven't learnt such fun swearing since I watched Firefly with the Pinyinary open.

[Tolemeo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nice concept, the implementation not so much. Also, the part about Italian swearing was quite mangled, so I'm not sure if I can trust the book on other languages. As usual, it's better to ask a local to help you with cussing/swearing.
(Yes, I'm opinionated about a swearing in multiple language.)

[Lokinda Julia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Erm.. 1,5 stars.. Additional points to one star can be added only for my initial interest in this book. I got easily bored unfortunately. It's a really lousy and useless read when there's no transcription of foreign words.. that's why even if a reader wanted to learn some vocabulary units, they wouldn't know how to pronounce them correctly. So what's the point of giving them then?
It was interesting to see what groups of words are used for swearing but that's all what you can get from this book. Useless read. Sometimes it can make you smile though.

[Emmanuel · Rating 3 out of 5]

No matter where you are in the world, your mom's a ho.

[Petra Be · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought it could be a fun read for my commuting. But not really. I must say I didn't read all of it because when I saw what they did to the Czech language, I stopped thinking I could actually get anything real from this book. There is also no pronunciation given.

"Syn psa!" is supposed to be a Czech swear phrase. Oh well, it's not even correct to begin with and this phrase doesn't exist (not even in its correct shape). So if the other languages are just as exact, then I don't see why I should bother.

[Mochii · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fairly quick read that does exactly what it wants-compiles many fun swears into one book. I find myself going back to it from time to time for laughs. It doesn’t help with pronunciations, and other reviewers say some phrases are wrong, but honestly I really hope you aren’t going somewhere else just to curse at people lol

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Funny, but not particularly useful (more phonetics would have helped tremendously).

[Antonia Carmando · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very easy to read. Something you might want to lightly read in your free time. It left me upset because I am Italian and the Italian translations weren't accurate at all. Some curse words were completely made up and as a native I've never heard of them. The part about religious cursing is very strong and it's not as common as the book seems to say. But I appreciated it for the sake of information and because is the only accurate part, regarding Italian.
The mistakes in my native language made me doubt of the other translations of languages I'm not familiar with.

[kyla ☁️ · Rating 3 out of 5]

i have realized you have to be at a certain angsty mood to be able to read this and actually learn something from it. as i didn't feel the need to, it was nice to know what expletives exist around the world. i wish it had like a thing where it tells you how to pronounce phrases. for the most part, it was fun.

[Kris Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s funny it took me almost a year to read this book. It’s a fairly short read but I think it’s only worth using if you’re learning a language. Like for me, it was interesting only because I know Spanish and learning German. It does have some interesting insights but I think it’s probably more of a reference than entertainment, personally.

[Elodie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining read, but got progressively less funny or novel. I was hoping for more creative phrases, and there are a few corkers in there, but it could have gone further.

There were also lots of errors in French, which is my first language, so that made me less confident that the other languages are accurate, which in turn lessened my enjoyment.

[Laci · Rating 4 out of 5]

Funnily written and funnily organized, this little booklet is an amusing (and informative) read for the language enthusiasts out there. There were some errors, but meh, who cares. Not like I intend to actually _use_ this stuff.

[Piers · Rating 2 out of 5]

A loosely curated collection of swear words around the world, with little to no cultural context to make it interesting, and no indication of pronunciation guide. I get the feeling this started as a "fun" idea for a project which rapidly became more work than the author expected.

[Aseel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Someone needs to check the Arabic language swearing because it is so wrong and the writers didn't mention which accent they are using or did they?
Some are Egyptian and tge others are not even readable

[X-Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice collection

This book has a great collection of curses and dirty slang but it is missing a good phonetic pronunciation guide along with the foreign words. Otherwise it would be a 5 star rating

[Stacey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad, some tables and explanations. To be fair though I was only looking for the basic swears. Illustrations not bad. I think it could have been done differently somehow so... informative but maybe lacking some pizazz.

[Wetdryvac · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was handed this book when really, really sleep deprived and thought initially it was a travel guide, like, go to many places and cuss there. Maybe like Around The World In 80 Days remade for modern times. It was not, and I am sad about that, but it does what it says on the box, and that's cool.

[Ana Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Una manera interesante de no entender como se dicen groserias en otros idiomas, pero una forma para adicionar otros insultos interesantes al lexico.

[Nahia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Una lectura para soltar un par de carcajadas más que nada por las traducciones free-style que han hecho.

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel this was written more as a reference book. So that's how I will use it. Decided not to read it through.

[Anastasiya · Rating 5 out of 5]

😂😂😂😂

[Barrie]

Useful

[Sriya · Rating 2 out of 5]

What the fuck was I thinking when I bought this?? 😂

[Frederick Gault · Rating 5 out of 5]

A charming compendium of how to get yourself punched in the face, or worse, in dozens of places around the world. Laugh out loud funny.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very funny! I have learned how to insult someone's mother in so many language. LOL

[Sherryl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fun mais pas d’aide phonétique pour les prononciations

[Paula · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOL