Tragic Effle

In "Vintage Effle" (12/18/2003) I linked to "the Effle Page, which introduces a useful word for the pseudo-language of many phrase books", and informs us that

The playwright Eugene Ionesco wrote a complete play in Effle, The Bald Prima Donna, the product of his experience of learning English from a textbook in 1950. He actually wrote the play in French, but it shows its origins clearly when translated back into English.

Futility Closet for New Year's Eve 2024 offer the English side of a phrase list from Collins' Pocket Interpreters: France (1937 edition), observing that

James Thurber, who came upon the book in a London bookshop, described it as a “melancholy narrative poem” and “a dramatic tragedy of an overwhelming and original kind.” “I have come across a number of these helps-for-travelers,” he wrote, “but none has the heavy impact, the dark, cumulative power of Collins’.

Here's the English side of that phrase list, taken from Thurber's work My World — And Welcome to it, as quoted in Futility Closet:

I cannot open my case. I have lost my keys. I did not know that I had to pay. I cannot find my porter. Excuse me, sir, that seat is mine. I cannot find my ticket! I have left my gloves (my purse) in the dining car. I feel sick. The noise is terrible. Did you not get my letter? I cannot sleep at night, there is so much noise. There are no towels here. The sheets on this bed are damp. I have seen a mouse in the room. These shoes are not mine. The radiator doesn’t work. This is not clean, bring me another. I can’t eat this. Take it away! The water is too hot, you are scalding me! It doesn’t work. This doesn’t smell very nice. There is a mistake in the bill. I am lost. Someone robbed me. I shall call a policeman. That man is following me everywhere. There has been an accident! She has been run over. He is losing blood. He has lost consciousness.

Boing Boing, linking to the Futility Closet post, asks

Is Collins' Pocket Interpreters: France (1937 edition) the most pessimistic phrasebook ever published? What was meant as a practical tool for British tourists instead became an accidental masterpiece of travel anxiety literature, suggesting that a trip to France was less about seeing the Eiffel Tower and more about navigating a gauntlet of pickpockets, stalkers, and blood loss.

And adds:

The book's phrases progress like scenes from a psychological thriller. It starts innocently enough with minor inconveniences before spiraling into increasingly dire situations, spiraling into a chronicle of mounting despair.

The (English) Wikipedia article on Ionesco's The Bald Soprano (La Cantatrice Chauve) describes the play's origin and interpretation this way:

The idea for the play came to Ionesco while he was trying to learn English with the Assimil method. Impressed by the contents of the dialogues, often very sober and strange, he decided to write an absurd play named L'anglais sans peine ("English without toil"). Other possible titles which were considered included Il pleut des chiens et des chats, ("It's raining cats and dogs", translated in French literally);[4] "L'heure anglaise"[5] and "Big Ben Follies".

Its actual title was the result of an error in rehearsal by actor Henri-Jacques Huet: the fire chief's monologue initially included a mention of "l'institutrice blonde" ("the blonde schoolteacher"), but Huet said "la cantatrice chauve", and Ionesco, who was present, decided to re-use the phrase. […] Like many plays in the theatre of the absurd genre, the underlying theme of The Bald Soprano is not immediately apparent. Many suggest that it expresses the futility of meaningful communication in modern society. The script is charged with non sequiturs that give the impression that the characters are not even listening to each other in their frantic efforts to make their own voices heard. There was speculation that it was parody around the time of its first performance, but Ionesco states in an essay written to his critics that he had no intention of parody, but if he were parodying anything, it would be everything.

It should be obvious that "effle" comes from the acronym EFL = "English as a Foreign Language", though the genre points in both directions — Ionesco's phrases came from a book to help French speakers with English, whereas Thurber's examples came from a book for British travelers in France.