‘Faux Pas’ explains common foreign phrases with humor, intelligence

“Faux Pas: A No-Nonsense Guide to Words and Phrases from Other Languages”

by Philip Gooden (Walker & Company, 231 pages, $16.95)

Learning a foreign language has never been so much fun.

“Faux Pas: A No-Nonsense Guide to Words and Phrases from Other Languages” by British author Philip Gooden is a small-sized treatise on all those foreign phrases that are casually tossed in by authors who assume everyone understands them. Unfortunately, most of the time readers are left completely in the dark.

“Faux Pas” attacks this problem with intelligence and humor. Gooden’s book is a sprightly romp through common foreign phrases from Latin, German, French, Chinese, Russian, Welsh, Yiddish and other languages. First he gives the definition, then the pronunciation, and then the context for using the phrase.

Every entry has a Pretentiousness Index. For example, it gently mocks users of such phrases as “au contraire” when the English “on the contrary” will do just as well.

You can tell this book isn’t American because most of the context statements are from British newspapers, which can make for some pretty opaque thoughts. Consider what Gooden has selected from The Guardian for “Hara Kiri,” the Japanese ritual suicide: “Politically, any school remaining bog standard nowadays is committing hara-kiri.”

“Bog standard?” Someone, please, get me a translator.

Guess even Gooden is capable of a “Faux Pas.”