Mamma mia! Italy’s gone all Scandi- Noir

There used to be a joke about the worst pieces of advice to give foreign tourists in London. ‘Be sure to test the famous echo in the British Library’ was one. ‘Feel free to urinate in any street displaying a P sign’ was another.

Are the editors of the Frommer’s phrasebooks performing a similar wind-up?

‘We offer an easy-to-use travel tool,’ runs the introduction to the copy of Frommer’s Italian Phrase Finder I picked up on holiday in Umbria last week.

‘Say a taxi driver accidentally hands you €5 instead of €10. Look up “change” in the dictionary and discover how to say: “Sorry, but this isn’t the right change.”

‘Then follow the cross-reference to numbers, so you can explain exactly how much is missing.’

This reads like the first scene of a Scandi-Noir. In the next scene the hapless tourist would be tossed onto a wasteland populated by cut-throats and drug addicts, with police sirens wailing away in the distance.

The chapter At The Airport also seems designed to land the unwary traveller in hot water. The suggested phrase, ‘They are for personal use’ is followed by ‘That is my medicine’, and ‘I’d like a female/male officer to conduct the search’. If anything, the accompanying phonetic translation would make things even worse: just imagine the faces of the surly customs officers as you struggled your way through, ‘ vohr- rAY oon ahJeN-teh DOhN-nah/ WOh-mah pehr la pehrkweezee -TSYOh-ne’.

equally, anyone parroting Frommer’s recommended phrases under Sports And Fitness is likely to end up with a black eye. The solitary english fan at the Italian football game is advised to shout ‘Schiacciateli!’, or, ‘Give it to them!’.

Golfers are also likely to come a cropper. The bossy questions suggested by Frommer’s — ‘Is the course dry?’, ‘Are there any wildlife hazards?’ and so on — would find you booted out of the club before you had reached the first tee.

A perilous air of entitlement underpins the entire phrasebook. Under Boating Or Fishing, their suggested phrases include ‘We’d like to see shipwrecks, if we can’ and ‘I don’t want to go with a group’. And what of the sad tourist who jumps into the sea and then has to dip into his trunks for his sodden phrasebook and leaf through it until he arives at page 168, with its suggested cry of ‘Non so nuotare!’, which is Italian for ‘I can’t swim!’? Things get no better on the open road. Under the heading Sorry, Officer comes a succession of phrases, ranging from sticky to stickier: ‘ What is the speed limit?’, ‘I wasn’t going that fast’, ‘how much is the fine?’, ‘The other driver hit me’. happy holidays! having managed to negotiate his way through these various clashes with customs officers, taxi drivers and policemen, the battered tourist is expected to make chummy conversation in a language he cannot speak. ‘As in the United States, europe, or anywhere in the world, the weather and current affairs are common conversation topics,’ advises the guide. The ice- breaker they suggest is ‘koh-NOh-sheh leh preh-vee-ZYOh-nee dehl TehM-poh pehr doh-MAhnee’, which is phonetic Italian for ‘Do you know the weather forecast for tomorrow?’. Fair enough, but, even if the Italian speaker you were addressing could be bothered to work out what on earth you were going on about, you would still be left clueless by his fluent reply. The same is true of the next topic. Under the umbrella headline ‘Che ne pensa -’ (‘What do you think about . . .?’) comes a long list, covering everything from ‘American republicans’ (‘day reh-poob-blee-KAh-nee ah-mee-ree-kAh nee’) to the environment and gay rights.

BYThe next page, the conversation has turned to religion. Once again, it seems to end in tears. After the Italian for ‘I’m spiritual but I don’t attend services’ comes ‘I don’t believe in that’, ‘ That’s against my beliefs’ and the irritable ‘ I’d rather not talk about it’.

There is worse to follow. In these post-Weinstein days, many of the phrases suggested under Nightlife could pitch the tourist into serious trouble.

Though this particular phrasebook was published in 2006, it already belongs to another world. I plan to explore it in greater detail on Thursday.