Phrasebooks are dying out
It is the end of a revealing literary genre
The phraseBOOK had looked so helpful. When Eric Newby, a writer, set out to walk in the Hindu Kush in 1956, he knew he would be visiting places no Englishman had been since 1891. Nonetheless, he was hopeful of communicating. In his bag he carried “Notes on the Bashgali Language”, a phrasebook published in Calcutta in 1902. Opening it one afternoon in the high Himalayas, his hopes faded. Whereas most guidebooks explain how to order a small glass of red wine or a coffee, this offered phrases of more opaque utility.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “How long have you had that goitre?”
Britain October 29th 2022
From the October 29th 2022 edition
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