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Metafilter feed 🤖 @Metafilter-feed5/18/2024, 7:44 PM

English as she was Spoke

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16thCentury, Anthropology, England, English, FamiliarDialogues, French, GreatBritain, History, Huguenots, Language, LanguageLearning, Linguistics, London, Phonetics, Phrasebook, ProjectGutenberg, Pronunciation, Refugees, Translation, Vernacular

Author: Rhaomi

In 1586, Jacques Bellot published one of the earliest printed phrasebooks for refugees, the Familiar Dialogues: For the Instruction of The[m], That Be Desirous to Learne to Speake English, and Perfectlye to Pronou[n]ce the Same. [...]
The book, in 16mo, is laid out in three parallel columns: English, French, and a quasi-phonetic transcription of the sounds of the English text. [...] Bellot says "I have written the English not onely so as the inhibaters of the country do write it: But also, as it is, and must be pronoun[n]ced". [...] While men had contact with the local community through their work and would have developed enough spoken English to get by, their wives and other family members who were mostly at home had limited opportunities to learn the local language. At this time, there was significant local hostility to foreigners in England, and [...] "a knowledge of everyday English was some protection against mindless scare-mongering" [...]

The content of the Familiar Dialogues belies its audience in that it caters to the immediate language needs of refugees and deals with everyday interactions. These include going to school, shopping and eating a meal [...] Indeed , this little book, with its focus on domestic situations rather than travel/touristic situations, anticipates the refugee phrasebooks of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.