I'll do graffiti if you'll sing to me in French

[venta]

Following on from my earlier claim that you can get by in a foreign country by smiling, being enthusiastic and saying "thank you" a lot, I wondered about the possibility of compiling a bare minimum phrase book for use by people who know nothing of the language they're going to be floundering in.

My BMPB should be small enough to fit onto a piece of paper considerably smaller than most phrasebooks. It assumes general goodwill on the part of the people to whom one is speaking, and isn't intended to cover any specific circumstance.


Yes
No
Please
Thank you
Thank you very much
Hello
Goodbye
See you later
Great [*]
It doesn't matter
1-10, 100
Can you write it down, please? [mostly for numbers not covered above, or placenames]
What do you call this?
I would like... [**]
I need... [**]
I have lost... [**]
I would like to go to (here) [points to map, or points to written-down placename]
... something
... that one/this one.
... one like this.
Where are the toilets?
I don't feel well

So, what have I missed for a BMPB ? What have I included that isn't really necessary ?

[*] A range (fantastic, brilliant, etc) also useful if you're going to be asked lots of questions
[**] Obviously an extensive list of nouns would be useful here. But you can do a lot with gesturing if necessary. I managed while in Italy to mime such things as "butter knife", "lens cap", "man who plays the melodeon", and "wine bar near the mask museum" without too much trouble.

Comments

[ringbark.livejournal.com]

Two beers, please.
With whipped cream, please.

That's all you need.

Now, a short and possibly apocryphal story about some English professor of the Japanese language, lost in Japan.

Professor (fluent Japanese): Can you tell me the way to the university, please?
Japanese person 1: (shrugs or otherwise looks blank)
Professor (fluent Japanese): Which way to the university please?
Japanese person 1: (shrugs or otherwise looks blank)
Professor tries various phrases without success, gives up and gets back in car. As he drives away he hears:
JP1 to JP2: You know, it sounded just as if that gaijin was asking for directions to the university.

By the way, my hovercraft is full of eels.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

That has happened to me in Japan. It was a main tenet of Japan's confidence in WW2 that their communications were by default secure because no foreigner could ever learn to speak Japanese. Yeah, that one failed, human beings in good at languages shocker. But plenty of people still appear to believe that foreigners are like parrots, that put the syllables together but don't understand what they are actually saying.

[venta.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine (despite being from Alabama) speaks very good Japanese. I don't know if he encountered this problem, but he did report (when he lived and worked in Japan) regularly overhearing conversations he shouldn't have done because people took it as read that he wouldn't be able to understand. I think these ranged from business discussions which were not meant for his ears to women at neighbouring café tables openly discussing his physique :)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Two beers, please.
With whipped cream, please.

Yuk! OK, beer in many places isn't as nice as it is here, but even so it's hard to imagine that adding whipped cream would be an improvement.