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Quirky things in old language materials

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meramarina
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 Message 25 of 41
11 December 2012 at 1:50am | IP Logged 
I have to revive this thread for a moment after making an interesting discovery at my favorite local vintage bookshop. I've never found any old language programs at this place before, but today a got a book called Spoken Japanese, published in 1945, University of Washington Far Eastern Publications, "published in complete conformity with the regulations of the War Production Board." I don't study Japanese, but I can't resist a vintage program, especially with dialogues such as these:

What time do you want to get up in the morning?
I want to get up at 10 o’clock.
Is that a fact?
No, I never want to get up.

Please explain.
Don’t you understand, even if I don’t explain? You ought to know!
If I don’t think it over, I don’t understand. Since my head hurts I can’t think, so please explain.
Why has your head become painful if you don’t use it?

Americans are all big. Isn’t that because they eat meat only?
No, that isn’t so. There are any number of people who are low in stature.

When you wear a gray suit, do you also wear underwear of the same color?
No. The color of underwear doesn’t matter, but I usually wear white.

I don't recall ever learning how to ask about the color of a conversation partner's underwear before. Nor do I want to!

There is also a long dialogue about a man who was injured when falling off stilts, but he feels embarrassed about it about this and he and a friend agree to tell others that he was in a car accident instead. They do this because they are "bamboo-stilt friends" or, longtime buddies.

I am a low stature American myself and might try that stilt thing.
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psy88
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 Message 26 of 41
11 December 2012 at 3:01am | IP Logged 
meramarina wrote:
I have to revive this thread for a moment after making an interesting discovery at my favorite local vintage bookshop. I've never found any old language programs at this place before, but today a got a book called Spoken Japanese, published in 1945, University of Washington Far Eastern Publications, "published in complete conformity with the regulations of the War Production Board." I don't study Japanese, but I can't resist a vintage program, especially with dialogues such as these:

What time do you want to get up in the morning?
I want to get up at 10 o’clock.
Is that a fact?
No, I never want to get up.

Please explain.
Don’t you understand, even if I don’t explain? You ought to know!
If I don’t think it over, I don’t understand. Since my head hurts I can’t think, so please explain.
Why has your head become painful if you don’t use it?

Americans are all big. Isn’t that because they eat meat only?
No, that isn’t so. There are any number of people who are low in stature.

When you wear a gray suit, do you also wear underwear of the same color?
No. The color of underwear doesn’t matter, but I usually wear white.

I don't recall ever learning how to ask about the color of a conversation partner's underwear before. Nor do I want to!

There is also a long dialogue about a man who was injured when falling off stilts, but he feels embarrassed about it about this and he and a friend agree to tell others that he was in a car accident instead. They do this because they are "bamboo-stilt friends" or, longtime buddies.

I am a low stature American myself and might try that stilt thing.







Off topic I know but have you fully recovered from Hurricane Sandy? I know you got hit pretty bad.I hope all is back to normal.
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meramarina
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 Message 27 of 41
11 December 2012 at 3:25am | IP Logged 
No, it will be a very long recovery. I'm managing OK for now but will be out of my home for weeks to months. It more or less needs to be rebuilt from the bottom up. The storm aftermath is not much in the news now but there's still a lot of damage, destruction, and displaced people.

However, on a positive note, my language books survived! Somehow my bookshelves, which had collapsed three times already, did not fall during the storm. So, book damage was minimal, but the rest of place and possessions mostly wrecked. But I try to find a little language relief when I can, and a funny phrasebook like the one I mentioned here helps to get my mind off of the more worrisome realities.

Edited by meramarina on 11 December 2012 at 3:25am
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emk
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 Message 28 of 41
11 December 2012 at 4:14am | IP Logged 
meramarina wrote:
But I try to find a little language relief when I can, and a funny phrasebook like the one I mentioned here helps to get my mind off of the more worrisome realities.


I hope that the worst passes as quickly as possible.

Here's a classic language course from 1883 that always cheers me up:

Quote:
English as She is Spoke

The walk.

Will you and take a walk with me?
Wait for that the warm be out.
Go through that meadow.
Who the country is beautiful! who the trees are thick!
Take the bloom's perfume.
It seems me that the corn does push alredy.
You hear the bird's gurgling?
Which pleasure! which charm!
The field has by me a thousand charms.
Are you hunter? will you go to the hunting in one day this week?
Willingly; I have not a most pleasure in the world. There is some
    game on they cantons?
We have done a great walk.

From the house-keeping.

I don't know more what I won't with they servants.
I tell the same, it is not more some good servants. Any one take
    care to sweep neither to make fire at what I may be up.
How the times are changed! Anciently I had some servants who were
    divine my thought. The duty was done at the instant, all things
    were cleanly hold one may look on the furnitures now as you do
    see. It is too different, whole is covered from dust; the
    pierglasses side-boards, the pantries, the chests of drawers, the
    walls selves, are changed of colours. I do like-it too much.

Idiotisms and Proverbs

The necessity don't know the low.
Few, few the bird make her nest.
He is not valuable to breat that he eat.
Its are some blu stories.
Nothing some money, nothing of Swiss.
He sin in trouble water.
A bad arrangement is better than a process.


According to Wikipedia, this book was an unauthorized adaptation of a French phrasebook for Portuguese speakers:

Wikipedia wrote:
It is widely believed that Carolino could not speak English, and that a French-English dictionary was used to translate an earlier Portuguese-French phrase book O Novo guia da conversação em francês e português, written by José da Fonseca. Carolino added Fonseca's name to the book in an attempt to give it some credibility. The Portuguese-French phrase book is apparently a competent work, without the defects that characterise English as She Is Spoke.


There was later an American edition with an introduction by Mark Twain:

Mark Twain wrote:
In this world of uncertainties, there is, at any rate, one thing which may be pretty confidently set down as a certainty: and that is, that this celebrated little phrase-book will never die while the English language lasts. Its delicious unconscious ridiculousness, and its enchanting naiveté, as are supreme and unapproachable, in their way, as are Shakespeare's sublimities.

Whatsoever is perfect in its kind, in literature, is imperishable: nobody can imitate it successfully, nobody can hope to produce its fellow; it is perfect, it must and will stand alone: its immortality is secure…

Many persons have believed that this book's miraculous stupidities were studied and disingenuous; but no one can read the volume carefully through and keep that opinion. It was written in serious good faith and deep earnestness, by an honest and upright idiot who believed he knew something of the English language, and could impart his knowledge to others.


Edited by emk on 11 December 2012 at 5:23am
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Quique
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 Message 29 of 41
12 December 2012 at 1:42pm | IP Logged 
From French without Toil (1940):

- Comment trouvez-vous la musique?
- La musique me plaît; elle est originale.
- N'est pas? C'est d ela musique moderne, sans tomber dans les exagérations du jazz.

I find funny that, what in 1940 was an excess, it's now a fine art.

It also seems that everybody learning foreign languages was in a very good economical
position and had a maid.
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ling
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 Message 30 of 41
12 December 2012 at 3:57pm | IP Logged 
I have a Chinese phrasebook from the early 80s with sentences such as "Long live the
great, glorious and correct Communist Party of China!"
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Avid Learner
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 Message 31 of 41
15 December 2012 at 9:56pm | IP Logged 
Thanks to FSI German, I can ask for my shoes to be soled. I had never heard of shoes being soled even in my native language before. It wasn't even in my German-French dictionary.
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Sprachprofi
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 Message 32 of 41
15 December 2012 at 10:19pm | IP Logged 
ling wrote:
I have a Chinese phrasebook from the early 80s with sentences such as "Long
live the great, glorious and correct Communist Party of China!"


A friend of mine had a Chinese textbook with the phrase "I learned Chinese in order to
support Chinese Communism!"


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