Boy, be off with you!: The Manual of Egyptian Arabic

[transemacabre]

In this post, pm215 discusses an English-Arabic phrasebook from 1926 which s/he had bought, and the hilarious phrases contained within that the author apparently felt a young British gent of the time period would need while touring Cairo. Such gems include:

I am determined to buy this monkey.
The chloroformed man slept like the dead.
I'm accustomed to smoke opium.
Both of them squint and three of their children are deaf mutes.

I cannot even imagine in what context those sentences might come up.

I looked up the book on Google Books, and oh golly, there it is! A few more phrases that pm215 didn't share with us:

Is it true that you have committed every sin in the Decalogue?
She died a natural death.
Don't be afraid, madam, I will protect you from the Jinns and Afrits.
The poison is killing him.
The hypocrisy of these Jews is beyond belief.
I wonder if any battle was fought on this spot in ancient times, for skulls and bones of all kinds are scattered everywhere.

Comments

[mike-smith.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of the Superman radio show from the 1940's. They did an arc where the gang goes to Saudi Arabia for some reason, and it was like they had gone to some fantasy land instead of an actual country.

The weird thing was that the writers seemed pretty cool about Islam as a religion, but the "Orientals" themselves were depicted as superstitious, treacherous, or backward. At least half of these quotes could have been lines from the show.

But at least that was fiction, and I assumed the writers preferred a caricature of foreign lands to the real thing. You'd think a travel guide would strive harder for accuracy. Unless Egyptians really did chloroform each other back then.

[lokifan]

*cackles*

[linaerys.livejournal.com]

THIS IS AMAZING.

Don't be afraid, madam, I will protect you from the Jinns and Afrits.

*DIES*