Der Kurtze Wegweiser zur Erlernung der Englischen Sprache und die Gestaltung seiner Musterdialoge

First published in Hamburg in 1699, the Short guide to learn the Englisch [sic!] Tongue by F. K. forms a prototypical example for the textbooks used by early modern learners of English and other modern languages. At the heart of the textbook we can find a collection of 16 situational dialogues offering communication models for their well-to-do bourgeois readers. Some passages of these dialogues seem to consist of a mere series of incoherent ready-made phrases for everyday conversation with Englishmen during travels abroad or business negotiations, while other more coherent parts have a more immersive and entertaining design. In some cases, their elements seem to have been adopted from comedy. In the Short guide’s fourth edition from 1713 the dialogues clearly refer to the social environment of the knight academies and thus to the galant context of nobility which, at the turn of the 18th century, was especially attractive to the ambitious young members of bourgeoisie supposed to use the textbook.