Before stumbling across page 115 of the German edition
of the Lonely Planet travelling phrase book series today, I hadn't realized just how "lonely" the target audience apparently was. Suddenly, the title of these travel guides has taken on a very different meaning.
Wondering if all their books are like this, I took a tour through those of them that I could locate in Google Book Search, and it does look as if such a section appears in many of their titles.
Their Latin American Spanish Phrasebook
has a section devoted to "el sexo" ("¡Vamos a la cama! ¡Así cariño, así!"). The Amharic (Ethiopian) phrasebook
has a "romance" and "dating" section that seems largely limited to "Can I take you home?" (በት ላደርሰህ?) and "Let's use a condom!" (ኮንዶም አነጠቀም). The Greek Phrasebook
is a bit more extensive on the same topic, including the apparently "charming" lines "Μ' αρεσει το στηθος σου / Μ' αρεσει ο κωλος σου... Do those actually work? The Portuguese Phrase Book
moves from teaching "o sexo anal" to "Porque é que não te mudas para o meu apartamento?" ("Wanna move in?") in just a couple lines of text. While it doesn't seem to spend as much time on sex as the other titles, their phrase book for Costa Rican Spanish
has a curious passage that introduces "¡Hijo de puta!", "¡No me jodas!", "¡Maldita sea!", "¡Mierda!", "¡Vete a la mierda!" and "¡Me cago en dios!" (!) followed by... "¡Que bruto!"—No shit, right?
The Vietnamese Phrasebook
doesn't seem to have a chance to introduce a sex/romance section due to the pages expended on teaching you how to ask the location of the methodone clinic and how to enroll! (Seriously, on page 105 in "Social Issues", the same page that teaches you how to swear in the language.)
Strange. Suppose I'll have to keep an eye out for the rest of these; I've read a lot of travel guides over the years, but the LP series is, I think, the first I've encountered that offers sections on scoring drugs or one night stands in foreign lands.
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