LINGUISTS OF THE TELEPHONE
Switchboard girls at the International Telephono Exchange in London arc up in arms at tho implication that all they know^ of foreign languages is just enough-, to repeat numbers and a few well-worn phrases, such as "Number engaged" arid "Sorry you have been troubled."
"Temps Perdu," who wrote in a letter to the editor of the "Daily Telegraph" that he doubted tho ability of ♦>'£ operators in the international exchange, to talk in. a foreign language on a wide variety of subjects outside the scope of their work, is invited, writes a contributor to that paper, to pay an informal visit to the Geneva Post Office and talk to the girls on any topic he chooses. They guarantee to be able to ."stump" him on the very latest colloquialisms.
I visited the exchange myself iocently and found that thero are 200 of these girls. All of them can speak fluent and colloquial French and German. Many of them, speak Spanish and Italian. Their accent i 3 almost flawless.
When the Prince of Wales visited the fr.P.O. at the opening of the international exchange in May last year ho
spoke to one of the operators in Spanish (a language.which tho Princo is known to speak fluently) and congratulated her on her command of the tongue.
There is a general impression that the switchboard girls are drawn from national exchanges and taught just enough of French and German to enable them to cope with telephone traffic. Actually the Post Office chooses the girls because of their knowledge of languages. Most of them were educated in the countries whose languages they speak.
Often these girls havo to act as interpreters when subscribers get into difficulties with each other's language. This is not part of their work, but when they hear an Oshkosh manufacturer struggling with his Harvard French to make a Parisian wholesaler understand his orders—at the rate of several dollars a minute —sheer good nature makes them come to tho rescue
An official at tho Post Office told mo that the girls become so wrapped up in the language they arc using that they unconsciously adopt the mannerisms of tho country concerned—tho high-pitched voice and vivacious manner of the French and the lower-pitched deliberation of the Germans,
LINGUISTS OF THE TELEPHONE
Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 78, 29 September 1934, Page 25
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