Slanguage: A Cool, Fresh, Phat, and Shagadelic Guide to All Kinds of Slang

by Mike Ellis

Book Overview

A worldwide guide to slang, from America's favorite slangologist, and creator of one of the Internet's most popular websites--voted by Wired as one of the top five fun sites of 1998 Ask for a pop in Manhattan and you'll probably be punched in the face. The same request for a soda in Chicago, however, will get you Coketm. And if you're going to the gym in New York, take your sneakers, but in Pittsburgh, grab your tennis shoes. Every day new words are...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0786885203
• ISBN13: 9780786885206
• Release Date: August 2000
• Publisher: Hyperion Books
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Slang and Regionalisms Made EZ

I have an old yellow pamphlet titled "How to Speak Pittsburghese." And I remember a humorous book titled "If I Tell You a Hen Dips Snuff," which provided piquant derivations for hundreds of mentally twisted but oddly appropriate expressions used by the anything-but-plain-spoken human population that ranches, fishes, crochets, hunts and haunts East Texas. I've been to parts of rural Colorado and California where I could barely understand what they call English--not that there's anything wrong with that. "American" is not now a single unified language, and it probably never has been. There have been more scholarly compilations of regional American usage mixed into larger-scope works or published as comparative examinations of cultural contrasts. In Slanguage, Mike Ellis's unique tool for rounding up and taming the slang highlights of over 200 different regions, eras, and genres, in a convenient and accessible way, is to break the expressions into little phonetic pieces. The divide-and-conquer result is light, fun, and useful to boot. Salespeople, for instance, could both enjoy this book, and use it to gain some insight into the jargon of the different regions they travel to, and speak to on the telephone. Town Andrews, Author of The Art of Hanging

Funny, Funny, and Funnier

I loved this book!!! If you have any interest in the English language, it's a must buy... It's a great gift if you're a traveler, and u want to fit in with the locals..

What a fun and educational read! Highly recommend!

I do a lot of traveling for work and my wife picked up this book for me as I endlessly wait in airport terminals or somewhere over the un-friendly skies. I've read it three times already! Each time catching things I missed before. This book is hysterical! As I flip each page, I learn a different phrase or tid-bit of information I never knew before about all sorts of places around the globe. Things you could never know without taking up residence in each region.Even a seasoned traveler like myself was surprised about how little I knew about places like Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Denver, Columbus, Boston, Nashville, and even Scranton, PA. Places I once only thought of as stopovers between business meetings and my home in Portland, Oregon, I now think of as little worlds of their own, with their own rich traditions and idiosyncrasies. The book even informs you on things you should and should not say in places like Beijing, London, Tokyo, Paris, Rome, Rio and even Nairobi.But the book also goes into gambling slang, golf slang, truck driver slang, day trader slang, military slang, ER slang, and even teenager slang (which will come in handy when my daughter becomes one next year). This book is a riot!You won't have to be a world traveler like me to appreciate this book. You just have to be curious about the world around you and enjoy the subtle differences that make all of us interesting, wonderful and special. I don't know how the author documented all this, but kudos. What a fun and educational read! Highly recommend!