Pnin Language and Communication Quotes

A special danger area in Pnin's case was the English language. Except for such not very helpful odds and ends as "the rest is silence/' "nevermore," "weekend," "who's who," and a few ordinary words like "eat," "street," "fountain pen," "gangster," "Charleston," "marginal utility," he had had no English at all at the time he left France for the States. Stubbornly he sat down to the task of learning the language of Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Poe, Edison, and thirty-one Presidents. In 1941, at the end of one year of study, he was proficient enough to use glibly terms like "wishful thinking" and "okey-dokey." By 1942 he was able to interrupt his narration with the phrase, "To make a long story short." By the time Truman entered his second term, Pnin could handle practically any topic; but otherwise progress seemed to have stopped despite all his efforts, and by 1950 his English was still full of flaws. (1.10.1)

The procedure was somewhat complicated. Professor Pnin laboriously translated his own Russian verbal flow, teeming with idiomatic proverbs, into patchy English. This was revised by young Miller. Then Dr. Hagen's secretary, a Miss Eisenbohr, typed it out. Then Pnin deleted the passages he could not understand. Then he read it to his weekly audience. (1.10.2)

"Say, I was there as a child exactly the same year," said pleased Joan. "My father went to Turkey on a government mission and took us along. We might have met! I remember the word for water. And there was a rose garden—" "Water in Turkish is 'su,'" said Pnin, a linguist by necessity, and went on with his fascinating past: Completed university education in Prague. (2.2.2)

It soon transpired that Timofey was a veritable encyclopedia of Russian shrugs and shakes, had tabulated them, and could add something to Laurence' s files on the philosophical interpretation of pictorial and non-pictorial, national and environmental gestures. It was very pleasant to see the two men discuss a legend or a religion, Timofey blossoming out in amphoric motion, Laurence chopping away with one hand. (2.4.4)

It was, she told him as they drove up Park Street, a school in the English tradition. No, she did not want to eat anything, she had had a big lunch at Albany. It was a "very fancy" school—she said this in English—the boys played a kind of indoor tennis with their hands, between walls, and there would be in his form a — (she produced with false nonchalance a well-known American name which meant nothing to Pnin because it was not that of a poet or a president). (2.6.4)

…Plila I pela, pela I plila….She floated and she sang, she sang and floated…Of course! Ophelia's death! Hamlet! In good old Andrey Kroneberg' s Russian translation, 1844—the joy of Pnin's youth, and of his father's and grandfather's young days! And here, as in the Kostromskoy passage, there is, we recollect, also a willow and also wreaths. But where to check properly? Alas, "Gamlet" Vil'yama Shekspira had not been acquired by Mr. Todd, was not represented in Waindell College Library, and whenever you were reduced to look up something in the English version, you never found this or that beautiful, noble, sonorous line that you remembered all your life from Kroneberg' s text in Vengerov's splendid edition. Sad! (3.6.33)

It was more trying when among such strangers Dr. Eric Wind, a completely humorless pedant who believed that his English (acquired in a German high school) was impeccably pure, would mouth a stale facetious phrase, saying "the pond" for the ocean, with the confidential and arch air of one who makes his audience the precious gift of a fruity colloquialism. (4.2.2)

"I speak in French with much more facility than in English," said Pnin, "but you—vous comprenez le Fran-gais? Bien? Assez Bien? Un peu?" "Trés un peu," said Victor. (4.8.13)

Two interesting characteristics distinguished Leonard Blorenge, Chairman of French literature and language; he disliked literature and he had no French. (6.2.1)

Hagen, playing his last card, suggested Pnin could teach a French language course: like many Russians, our friend had had a French governess as a child, and after the Revolution he lived in Paris for more than 15 years.
"You mean," asked Blorenge sternly, "he can speak French?"
Hagen, who was well aware of Blorenge' s special requirements, hesitated.
"Out with it, Herman! Yes or no?"
"I am sure he could adapt himself."
"He does speak it, eh?" We can' t use him in first-year French. It would be unfair to our Mr. Smith, who gives the elementary course this term and, naturally, is required to be only one lesson ahead of his students.
Now it so happens that Mr. Hashimoto needs an assistant for his overflowing group in intermediate French. Does your man read French as well as speak it?"
"I repeat, he can adapt himself," hedged Hagen.
"I know what adaptation means," said Blorenge, frowning.
"In 1950, when Hash was away, I engaged that Swiss skiing instructor and he smuggled in mimeo copies of some old French anthology. It took us almost a year to bring the class back to its initial level. Now, if what' s-his-name does not read French—"
"I' m afraid he does," said Hagen with a sigh.
"Then we can' t use him at all. As you know, we believe only in speech records and other mechanical devices. No books are allowed."
"There still remains advanced French," murmured Hagen.
"Carolina Slavski and I take care of that," answered Blorenge. (6.3.2)