English as she was Spoke

May 18, 2024 11:19 AM

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.

Jacques Bellot’s Familiar Dialogues: An Early Modern Refugee Phrasebook // Read the book on Project Gutenberg // The history of Huguenot refugees in England // Linguist Simon Roper has a neat video exploring (and re-enacting) the book's practical "Street English"
posted by Rhaomi (9 comments total)

historical context
posted by torokunai at 11:37 AM on May 18

This is a nifty find! But the assertion that wives would largely remain at home and have little chance to learn the language is...strange, or at least badly phrased. A lot of Huguenot refugees were small craftsmen working from or near their homes or a combined home/shop and their wives would've been intimately involved in running their businesses. Much household management would also have required interaction with the surrounding community. Huguenots were Protestants and they did have a number of their own churches but otherwise Huguenot women would've been involved in local English churches and regardless in the broader parish and local self-government (including, in London, potentially guild) life. In other words, while women's roles in Tudor England were restricted, the restrictions didn't fall cleanly into the home/public sphere lines one might imagine from the Victorians (or the Attic Greeks), because life didn't work like that. If you're regularly bargaining in the shops for yourself, pitching to customers, managing servants, dealing with your neighbors, going to church and attending civic ceremony, all in English, you're not that isolated from the language.
posted by praemunire at 11:58 AM on May 18 [8 favorites]

The dialogue between the family members features authentic squabbling between a brother and sister.

You deserue to be beaten: But you feare nothing, why doe you not gyrt you [dress yourself] Stephen?
Vous meritez d'estre batu: mais vous ne craignez rien. Que ne vous iartez vous?
You desêrf tou by béétin: Bout you féér nòting: houey dou you not guert you?
posted by Countess Elena at 12:35 PM on May 18 [2 favorites]

At one point, I was a double English major. Later changed to an English literature minor. The one class I had to pick up for that minor was “history of the English language” or the like.

It was a linguistics class, and my prof approached it that way, but it ended up being one of my fave classes in college. Go figure. This is a fun link. (I cheated on the linguistics pre-req it required, but made up that ground as I went along, ha.)

I still have that Baugh textbook. M
posted by teece303 at 12:43 PM on May 18

The poor draper must dread seeing Androw entering the shop, there's bargaining; and there's being a miserable short-arms-long-pockets entitled git.
At the butcher I want to know what is "a sheepe gather. vne couroye de mouton." is it one of the wobbly bits?
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:51 PM on May 18 [2 favorites]

Total erasure of the huge population of Huguenot people who came to Scotland. Basic research fail.
posted by scruss at 2:51 PM on May 18 [1 favorite]

My hovercraft is full of eels!
posted by briank at 3:21 PM on May 18 [2 favorites]

A "sheep's gather" is apparently the sheep's heart, liver and lungs. I found this in a footnote of the strange early-1590s play The Battle of Alcazar, for which we have a partial props list, and in which one of the dumbshows (wordless interludes between each act) calls for "three vials of blood" and "a sheeps gather." When not being used as stage viscera, it could be used to make haggis.
posted by Pallas Athena at 10:43 AM on May 19

Ah thank you, Pallas Athena. So a sheep's gather is structurally equivalent to a chicken's pluck [noun 2].
posted by BobTheScientist at 1:08 PM on May 19 [1 favorite]