By way of example...

[pm215]

One of the things I like about books on foreign languages is their example sentences. Sometimes these are obviously constructed: it's been pointed out that every single google hit for "John sent Mary" is an example sentence... But the better books have examples which tempt you to try to reconstruct the context that has been stripped from them; the Basic Dictionary of Japanese Grammar includes sentences that feel like soap-opera plot summaries, as well as examples to demonstrate the all-important distinction between "X is not manly" and "It seems that X is not a man".

Anyway, this weekend I picked up (for the princely sum of 25p) the Manual of Egyptian Arabic, purely for the quality of its example sentences. This book was published in 1926 and presumably the sentences are ones the authors felt would be useful for a gentleman of the Empire in the streets of Cairo. So where most books would start with "Hello, my name is X" this one begins with "boy, be off with you!".

Other handy phrases:

• On the arrival of the creditors I prefer to depart.
• There are bugs in the bedstead.
• Let it be known that I am a very learned man!
• These mangoes are not as good as those of Bombay.
• These thievish people are going to prison.
• Be quiet or I'll break your head for you.
• I am determined to buy this monkey.
• I hope my wife won't become like her mother.
• You don't dance badly but your singing is vile.
• The chloroformed man slept like the dead.
• What is that stuffed crocodile for that is over the door?
• He bribed me with two dollars on the sly.
• Not only did the driver not agree to his fare but he hit me with his whip.
• Do you think me a simpleton and an idiot?
• I think this man a bore and don't want to be with him anywhere.
• This scoundrel cheated me and I'll never buy from him again.
• My socks have shrunk in the wash.
• When he saw the lioness coming towards him he lost his head and began to run.
• Late again, Mustafa, you don't deserve your pay.
• I'm accustomed to smoke opium.
• Call this a horse? It's nothing but a skeleton.
• I didn't abuse him first, he was the aggressor.
• His slave is called "Snowball" and his slave girl "Sweet Violet".
• His servants have conspired to poison him and I fear they will succeed one day.
• They practise female infanticide.
• Both of them squint and three of their children are deaf mutes.
• These scarabs are all faked.
• I by myself killed the robbers.
• I'm going out gazelle hawking with an Arab tribe.
• This avocat suffers from logorrhoea.
• As a rule criminals are from the lower classes.