Tell me what you collect and I will tell you who you are!
If I tell you that I collect phrasebooks, among other things (train timetables, vintage travel guides, antiquarian books), you would be right to assume that, apart from being a train buff, a compulsive traveller and a bookworm, I am also a linguist.
I admire phrasebooks because they often contain much more than pure linguistics. They can be wonderfully irrelevant (as well as irreverent!), as mocked in the famous Monty Python quip “My hovercraft is full of eels”, or parodied by Serbian satirist Branislav Nušić in his hilarious 1924 Autobiography: “Have you seen my uncle’s knife?”. And to me, they are like fossilised human voices—genuine fragments of the customs, traditions and cultures of epochs gone by and of modern times.
I’d like to share some isolated “vox pops” from my ever-growing collection of phrasebooks, by way of examples.
Let’s start with the four-language Baedeker’s Manual of Conversation, from 1893. “The harness is mended…We can now get to the post-house without any danger”, one phrase reads. Or how about another classic, from the 1886 edition of the once-popular Manual? “Der Kutscher ist betrunken!” translates as “The coachman is drunk!”.
One of the rarest items in my collection is Manuale di Conversazione Italiana-Inglese published in Mussolini’s Italy in 1943 (with a regulation swastika on the cover). Here’s one of its verbal exchanges in the spirit of the times: “I have money to receive of M**. Would you kindly give me his address?” says one. “He resides at present in the debtors’ prison,” is the reply. “Make haste and get your bill protested!”
Now, to the inimitable phrasebooks of my first, Soviet, life.
“I am a chemical engineer by profession. I work at one of Moscow’s biggest factories. I get up at a quarter to eight. I take a cold shower...” (Russian-English Phrasebook, 1979).
As far as I can recall, the “cold shower” here has more to do with chronically erratic hot water supplies than with the fitness bravado of a mythical Moscow “engineer”.
One would definitely need a cold shower after reading the following passage from the “At a Communist Party Meeting” section of a 1976 Russian-Estonian Phrasebook: “Let’s vote now. Who is in favour of the agenda, raise your hands. Who is against? None. Who has abstained? None. The agenda has been accepted unanimously.” No other options offered!
In Estonia, phrasebooks have always had practical significance, even for linguists. Estonian is a peculiar-sounding Finno-Ugric language with 14 case endings, no future tense, two different infinitives, yet just one word for “he” and “she”; and, to cap it all, something called “the partitive plural”! This is not to mention ubiquitous double vowels and consonants, which makes it sound as if the alphabet itself suffers from chronic stutter. “Our language has neither sex nor future,” runs an Estonian joke. “Estonian is a collection of exceptions,” says a Tallinn-based British friend of mine.
Here are a couple of abrupt exclamations, or rather barking commands, from A Short Russian-Estonian Military Phrasebook, published in Moscow in 1940, shortly after the Soviet army occupied Estonia in the aftermath of the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop pact: “Hands Up! Lie down!”, “Make noise—and I will kill you!”, “If you run, I will shoot you!” And so on. An amazing historical document, which, hopefully, won’t need a reprint in the near future.
On a lighter note, here are some phrases suggested by a tongue-in-cheek English-Estonian phrasebook, specially published for an international IT conference, held in Tallinn in 2013. That compact brochure convincingly disproves the myth that IT professionals are nerds without a sense of humour.
“Make me a hotspot!”; “No, there’s no hacking on the other side of the door”;
“Are your automated systems immune?”,
“The conceptual network will sweep you off your feet”; “When I grow up, I want to become a hacker”...
“Show me an impermeable computer system, and I’ll show you an ideal cyber attack”, “I am awfully tired of computers and would like to go out to the meadow”. And, closer to the end: “Sleep tight, don’t let the botnets bite”...
Incidentally, that quirky phrasebook also tells you how to say, “My hovercraft is full of eels” in Estonian: “Mu holijuk on angerjaid tais”! You never know, it may come useful one day…
Alas, the latest addition to my collection is not at all amusing. The English-Ukrainian Phrasebook for Helping Refugees by Anna Ohoiko was published in 2022, several months after the Russian invasion. It includes the following remarks:
“Do you often cry?”
“Yes, I cry a lot.”
“I am scared.”
“Did you hear air-raid sirens?”
“Is there an air raid shelter nearby?”
“Ukraine is in my heart”.
The book ends with the quote from President Zelensky, who concludes that made-up, yet tragically realistic, dialogue: “Life will win over death, and light will win over darkness.”
A prolonged moment of silence...
Vitali Vitaliev's "Atlas of Geographical Curiosities - Britain" is published by Jonglez and is available for purchase in bookshops and online.
