Do you know about a series of books that say they are “for dummies”? These American self-help books have been translated into more than thirty-nine languages including Chinese, Arabic, Russian, French, German, Greek and Spanish.

 “Dummy” is a word for a stupid person. The dummies books are not really for stupid people. They are designed to show people how to do something they may never have tried before, like painting a house or learning a language. The books all say in a funny way that they are for dummies, such as World History for Dummies, Rabbits for Dummies, Chinese Cooking for Dummies, and Wedding Planning for Dummies. The first such book, DOS for Dummies, was published in 1991. It helped people learn how to use the DOS operating system for computers. Since then, more than one hundred fifty million dummies books have been sold.