Text 8 Taming a guide

Here I may say a few words about these necessary nuisances, European guides. Many a man has wished in his heart he could do without his guide: but as it was not possible, he has wished he could get some amusement out of him. Guides know enough English to mix everything up so that a man can make neither head nor tail of it. The guides know their story by heart – the history of every statue, painting, cathedral or other wonders they show you. They know it and tell it as a parrot would. All their lives long they show strange things to foreigners and listen to their admiration. One of our guides in Italy was full of admiration, full of impatience – he wanted to show us the bust of Christopher Columbus.“Ah, gentlemen, you come with me! I’ll show you beautiful, oh, magnificent bust of Christopher Colombo!Splendid, grand, magnificent! (The guide spoke English incorrectly and his pronunciation was very bad). He brought us before the beautiful bust – for it was beautiful – and said, “Ah, look, gentlemen – beautiful, grand bust, Christopher Colombo! – beautiful bust, beautiful pedestal!” The doctor put up his eye-glasses and said: “Ah, what did you say this gentleman’s name was?” “Christopher Colombo – great Christopher Colombo!” “Christopher Colombo – great Christopher Colombo. What did he do?” “Discover America! - Discover America!”

“Discover America? No – that statement will hardly wash. We are just from America ourselves. He heard nothing about it.”

Guides know enough English to mix everything up so that a man can make neither heard, nor tail of it. (this utterance represents a combined tune consisting of 3 adjacent intonation groups, the last 2 of which are in relations of mutual dependence, which means that both the groups are independent. The most typical tone sequence is the opposite direction of tones. First part is usually mid wide rise, the second one – high fall, because such phrases usually express contrast.)

I’ll show you beautiful, oh, magnificent bust of Christopher Colombo! Splendid, grand, magnificent! ( these utterances are emotionally colored and the speaker’s attitude is rather energetic and enthusiastic, that’s why the High emphatic falling tone combined with the Irregular Prehead is suitable in this case to show this expressiveness.)

Admiration – a compound word, which in English is usually pronounced with 2 stresses, secondary and primary, so the main stress is put to the 2 syllable from the end. Because words ending in –ation, -ic, -ive, usually have such stress pattern.

Eye-glasses - a composite word, which consists of two nouns, in English such words are usually hyphenated and have primary stress on the first word. The word expresses one entire idea and the first word is more semantically prominent than the second one.