CONTINENTAL JOURNEY WITH A PHRASE-BOOK

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23169, 15 October 1938, Page 1 (Supplement)

CONTINENTAL JOURNEY WITH A PHRASE-BOOK

In Venice You Understand "All They Say"

By M. F. GRAHAM

traveller on the verge of setting out across Europe comes to a pause in his packing when he sits back on his heels to wonder, with mingled excitement and apprehension, how he is going to cope with the language problem. Will his school French suffice him in France? Will there always be an Englishspeaker at hand in Germany? And will the language of signs and gestures keep him fed, clothed, sheltered and transported elsewhere? Fortunately for the international tourist trade, he never knows the worst until he gets there. If he had an inkling of what lay before him, he might in panic hire an interpreter on the spot, or—a more likely alternative—start unpacking. Either way, of course, he would miss a lot of fun. Amazing Coincidence Actually, any .travel agent would assure him with a light laugh that his fears wore groundless. It is a favourite remark among such people that every second person in Europe speaks English as to the- manner born. This may indeed be so, but the amazing coincidence is that the lost, strayed, harassed and generally mishandled traveller invariably encounters the non-English-speaking half of the population, that useful "every second person" being ever indisposed, out of town, dead last week, or recently struck dumb.

There are, to be sure, ways and means of hearing nothing but English spoken on the Continent. If you travel everywhere by air, hire couriers and limousines at every port of call, and put up at the most expensive "fivestar" hotels, you will find that the only other travellers foolish enough to have done the same are also either English or American —and of the unenterprising type which certainly does not risk any first false steps in a foreign language. So you may hear plenty of English spoken, but you will not get to know the countries you travel through, nor the people who live there, nor the humours and mysteries of the languages they speak. In fact, you might just as well stay at home. Evading the Guide The piece of advice to which all this leads is that the traveller on the threshold of fresh woods and pastures new should try to learn a little of the language of the country which he plans to visit. Even if it amounts merely to buying a phrase-book—buy it. Not only because it may at some point in your travels become vitally essential for you to announce: "1 am going to tie the umbrellas together," but because' it will in every way add to the pleasure, value and amusement of your holiday to bo familiar with a few of the phrases everyone uses every day. You can trust your person out of sight of that 'officious guide who makes you feel you are back in kindergarten; you can venture on a tram or the underground railway with a pretty fair idea of where you are going; you can refuse in no uncertain terms the

souvenirs that are thrust under your nose at every step, constantly reminding you. how very much you must appear the foreigner; you can even order your own food —surely man's most elementary privilege. Of course, France' is simple enough. How easy it is now to say that, drawing a veil over some —to borrow an American phrase—"pretty bad breaks." But after all, nearly every Englishman has a little French, nearly every Frenchman has a little English, and since the French at least are very amiable, half the battle is won before the fighting starts. A good tip to any traveller making for France, however, is to brush up his numerals. It can be very disconcerting when a taxi-driver rapidly gabbles in a far too French accent something that sounds suspiciously like "four twenties and twelve." And it is quite fatal —or at least very expensive—to let him work it out ior you. Making a Bargain Germany is in some respects easier than France. For. instance, if a certain French word looks like a certain English word, you can be quite sure they are poles apart in meaning. But in German you can generally trust the resemblance. The Germans, I found, are almost as

amiable and rather more intelligent than the French, so that even if they do not understand your English or your German, as the case may be, they will generally be able to put themselves in your shoes, as it were, and guess your difficulty. A good deal of French is spoken in Germany, and oddly enough it is often easier for an English person to understand a German's French than that of a Frenchman; I suppose because both English and Germans speak it with the same halting and atrocious accent. But even if, as in my case, you make your French serve for the most part in Germany, that German phrase-book will still come in tremendously handy, and — please restrain that smile—any German words you can pick up on the way through Germany will be the saving of you if you go on to Hungary. In proof of that claim I merely state that I bought an antique Hungarian shawl in the open market in Budapest from an illiterate old peasant woman speaking nothing but bad Magyar and worse German, and weighing 15 stone, and what is more, beat her down five pengos tor it, though I have no doubt she still made a handsome profit. Hot and Cold This Hungarian is an impossible language, and 1 doubt if even a phrasebook would help you much. You learn the names of the shopping centres and a few landmarks in the hope—-often yain—that the bus conductor will remember to put you off there. Then from the bitter experience of trial and error with the words "meleg" and "hideg" oil the bathroom taps you learn which is hot and which cold, but. however badly you scald yourself, you always seem to forget which is which before you next need the knowledge, and have to go through the same painful process of learning all over again. Water taps are not nearly so embittering in Hungarv, however, as in Italy, where "caldo"—can you credit such callous deceit? —means hot. When you go from Hungary to Yugoslavia, you go from bad to worse, as far as the golden gift of speech is concerned. There is still the word "bar," which appears to mean the same all over the world, but beyond that piece of encouragement, I can help you no further. If the Yugoslavs cannot understand your facial expressions, you are lost indeed. What a lingual relief then, to take that long weary railway journey to cosmopolitan, international Venice, where a handsome gondolier will rush straight up to you and shout, "Grand Canal, gondola, moonlight, Casanova, O Sole Alio, 10 lire. Yes?" aud j r ou understand every word of itj