Talking to the enemy...: the military phrasebooks by the litterateur Osip Senkovskii (1828) and Lieut.-General Nikolai Biasi (1941). Part 2

Abstract

The article 1 offers a comparison between two military phrasebooks the "Pocket-book for the Russian soldiers on the Turkish frontline” (Karman-naia kniga dlia russkikh voinov v turestkikh pokhodakh) [St. Petersburg, 1828] by Osip Ivanovich Senkovskii (1800-1858) and the "The The Concise Russian-German military phrasebook for a private soldier and subaltern” (Kratkii russko-nemetskii razgovornik dlia boitsa i mladshego komandira) [Moscow, 1941] by Lieut.-Gen. Nikolai Nikolaevich Biiazi (1893-1973). The author argues that these types of scholarly and literary production cannot be considered as ‘phrasebooks’ par excellence, since such reference books could be hardly used on the battlefield. The research makes it evident that these "phrasebooks” were designed as "teach yourself" manuals of colloquial Turkish and German and adapted to the needs of a non-specialist audience. In the second part special attention is paid to the analysis of the "built-in’’ mechanisms as designed by Senkovskii and Biiazi, which enabled prompt language learning by the military audience.