Emily Brewer

For the most part this is an interesting collection of First World War slang, as used by troops from the Entente and Central powers. I read Goodbye to All That in parallel, and it was surprising to see how many words and phrases cropped up in his tales from the trenches, and indeed many which we would today consider normal, but were at the time sufficiently novel as to warrant being written in 'quotes'. Certain idiomatic phrases still in common parlance quite obviously have their origins in the Great War, but what was surprising is the number of words of Hindi origin that have become so commonplace: cushy, doolally, goolies and Blighty all apparently having their origins on the subcontinent.

Unfortunately, there were a number of issues with this book that somewhat detract from being able to recommend it. On a personal note, I found the formatting and layout a little off-putting, with words only separated from their definitions with a dash, making it difficult to glance through. Similarly, the entries themselves appeared to follow no consistent form, with some having etymologies, example sentences, literal translations or any combination of the same.

Another major problem in my view is that the volume is split into three sections, with British and Empire slang separated from that of their Entente and US allies, and the Germans bringing up a section of their own. Yet there didn't seem to be much logic for separating the US slang from the rest of the English-speaking peoples – Graves, for example, seemed to employ slang from both sides of the divide in his reminiscences – and being lumped with the French words it wasn't always easy to tell whether words were used in French or English. The few Russian words which crop up in the allied section similarly appear to serve no purpose other than to widen the breadth of languages covered, but given that they included such everyday fare as 'please' and 'thank you', I'm not even sure what to make of them. Where words have come from foreign languages, the original is often provided in the respective script, however these are presumably unintelligible for the average reader, and presumably contain numerous mistakes anyway (the Arabic words are written left-to-right, for example).

The German section at least makes up for some of the shortcomings elsewhere. There are still a few small spelling errors or debatable translations, but nothing that the average reader would find amiss. Far more important here is the visible breadth of common experience shared by the combatants on all sides as seen through the prism of language, and how this event had such a lasting impact that it can be seen and felt in the way we talk today.… (meer)