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Vol/53 No/5 2014 OCTOBER/NOVEMBER The Linguist 9 LANGUAGES IN THE GREAT WAR Front had separate rhymes for bullet, head, foot, arm, shrapnel, ankle, knee and eye wounds, although remembering them at the required moment may not have been easy. Trench French Besides being essential in combat, language had more pleasant uses on the Western Front. Phrasebook authors suggested that the soldier who spoke even a little French might have a more pleasant or comfortable war. Being able to communicate in a foreign language was a new experience for many troops, and brought a sense of excitement and pleasure amid the chaos of war. The words for bread, beer, eggs and wine were quickly learned and proudly repeated in the letters men sent to their families, often accompanied by descriptions of the various hand gestures. 'Trench French', a rudimentary mixture of both languages, became commonplace, peppered with phrases such as napoo (non plus) and no bong (no bon). Shops and cafés in the towns and villages around the Western Front stayed open for much of the war, and the local population, heavily reliant on commerce with troops, soon picked up sufficient English. However, men still enjoyed trying out Trench French, especially when staying in billets with French families. 'You would be very amused at the soldiers' French out here,' Lieut. Edward Malins wrote to his sister, 'which mainly consists of "no bon" "napoo" mixed up with English words and dumb show. I heard one of the servants saying to Madame the other day "custard powder napoo, Madame!"' 2 Equally popular among troops was vocabulary aimed at smoothing encounters with the opposite sex. As the lyrics of the popular song Mademoiselle from Armentières hints, a little 'parlez-vous' brought obvious benefits. Sexual phrases make frequent appearances in men's memoirs, including the ubiquitous 'jig-a-jig', which was used by soldiers looking for brothels, prostitutes plying their trade and even French schoolboys attempting to pimp for their sisters. Wartime linguistic exchange offered no room for a subtle appreciation of registers of speech, and one soldier recalled being shocked when a 15-year-old French girl asked him directly qu'est-ce-que c'est 'cock'? Yet even at the height of the war there was room for more gentle encounters. The Allies, a short story by Captain John Morgan, published under the pseudonym Centurion in 1918, shows how this might work. When Sgt John Lawrence tries to buy two eggs, he confuses deux (which he pronounces as 'dooze') and douze. Frustrated, he decides to pay the shopkeeper's daughter to teach him French. Romance flourishes and the story ends with their marriage. Morgan's fiction is based on actual events: more than a thousand British servicemen married French women during the war, and many more weddings took place in its immediate aftermath. In spite of the lack of formal provision, men on the Western Front had many incentives to learn at least a little French. Although few became fluent, learning some words eased essential interactions around eating, drinking and shopping, bringing a deeper sense of engagement with the civilian population. In this way, language became critical to men's emotional and psychological wellbeing. Speaking French aided men's survival behind the lines as much as the phrasebook authors felt it might help in the combat zone. Notes 1 Gibbons, J, Roll on Next War!: The common man's guide to army life, 1935, F Muller, 50 2 Malins, E F, Edward: Selections from the Letters of Edward Francis Malins, 1919, Templar Printing Works, Birmingham, 9 December 1917 A soldier had been fired on by the French as he did not know to shout 'Anglais' – three others were killed MILITARY LINGO Troops studying French in the trenches, as pictured in The Literary Digest on 20 October 1917