English as She Is Spoke

By Pedro Carolino and José da Fonseca

Book Overview

In 1855 Pedro Carolino set out to write an English phrasebook for Portuguese travelers visiting England. The only problem was that he couldn't speak English. Undeterred by this minor setback, Carolino decided to base his guide on a respected Portuguese-French phrasebook written by Jos da Fonseca. He took the French translations of Portuguese, and used a French-English dictionary to translate those to English. The result was an unintentional comedy of literal translation, as English phrases like "the walls have ears" became "the walls have hearsay" (via the Portuguese as paredes t m ouvidos), and "waiting for someone to open the door" became "to craunch the marmoset" (via a ridiculous misreading of archaic English, and the shape of the grotesque door knockers popular at the time). The entire guide was quite large, and not only was it of no practical use as an actual phrasebook, but its length made it too much of a slog to appeal as a comedy. But its legend slowly grew, until in 1883 it was republished in an abridged form as a book of humor titled English as She Is Spoke (a phrase which, incidentally, doesn't appear in the book itself). The abridged edition, taking the comedic highlights from the long and tedious original, is the edition that became famous. This Standard Ebooks edition is based on that abridgment. The book's absurd mistranslations were said to have made Lincoln laugh aloud when read to him by his secretary John Hay, and Mark Twain said that "nobody can add to the absurdity of this book, nobody can imitate it successfully, nobody can hope to produce its fellow; it is perfect."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0CDKFTXDC
• ISBN13: 9791041801244
• Release Date: May 2023
• Publisher: Culturea
• Length: 52 Pages
• Weight: 0.18 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.1" x 5.8" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Ongoing entertainment

I'd heard about this book years ago, but just bought it recently. It doesn't disappoint! It's the sort of thing that could never be created these days - more's the pity - and every page contains some strange gem. We've had it on the coffee table since it arrived, and just dip in at random from time to time, reading aloud the best of what we find. You wouldn't want to sit and read it straight through from cover to cover, but it's none the worse for that. For fans of language and lovers of the unusual and the absurd!

Comedy at its peak

First, let me say that I am a native Portuguese speaker and that I understand English very well (though my writing skills are not that good, I ask you to comment this review if you see any grammatical error), this book is a classic, it's so funny that people in the metro thought that I was mad because of the loud laughs, that said, I recommend someone to have a passable reading ability in some romance language to fully enjoy this book, if portuguese is a problem for you could try to learn to read in some other language, specially spanish that is closer to portuguese, catalan, italian or french will do if you're good with languages and have a portuguese dictionary.

The funniest book you will ever own

I know that it is not politically correct to make fun of foreigners who can't read or write English (unless they're from Texas), nor should we laugh at their resultant manglings. But what about foreigners who deliberately set out to write an English guidebook for Portugese-speakers and get it all kinds of wrong. After all, they kind of ask for it, right? Especially if those translators spoke NO English... And did not have an English-Portugese dictionary... Well, I think that's probably OK to laugh at. And laugh at it you will. The entries are so mangled they're almost poetry. I also enjoyed the fact that, since it is a 19th century book, it deals with those extremely odd arcane things, like bedwarmers and used horses.

To Craunch the Marmoset

This is one of my very favorite books of all time. Carolino and Fonesca wrote this to cure the phrase book gap in the 1800s. It seems that there was no Portuguese-English phrase book available at the time and they decided to take on the task of writing one despite the fact that neither spoke English. Likewise, they only owned Portuguese-French and French-English dictionaries which results in some surreal 'translations.' ("Do you cut the hairs?"; "Comb me."; "For to craunch the marmoset.") You will also learn a bit of taxonomy. Previously I had not known that a Hedgehog was a type of fish, for instance. I can't recommend this gem of a book highly enough. I have an edition with a forward by Mark Twain in addition to this expanded edition. Twain and I both find this book perfect and unable to be improved on. As Carolino says: "It must never to laugh of the unhappies."

Everyone laughs when they look at this.

.In the 19th century, there were no english phrase books for the Portuguese market, and the authors sought to fill that gap with this book, now reprinted in full. Ah, what a futile, heartfelt exercise this book turned out to be, for they had no English-Portuguese/Portuguese-English dictionaries to work with, only English-French and French-Portuguese as a substitute, and knew no English themselves and had no English speaking editors. The required gyrations led to hilarious results. Page after page of mangled sentences and hilarious absurdities follow the original Portuguese:"Where correspond the bells?""She have always anything which is it bad.""These are the dishes whose you must be and to abstain."The authors also provided us with vocabulary for common terms (examples in the bed room are "the bed battom" and "the feet's bed") as well as typical dialogs you might have (for instance, when buying furniture, "Pardon me, it comes workman's hands.")A little of this goes a long way, though; it's not for extended reading, but it's quite suitable for abbreviated sessions (and is better than Dave Barry for the bathroom because it's shorter and continuity doesn't matter a whit) or passing around at a party.But it's a wonderful monument to misguided effort, and we enjoy it a lot. I've never seen anyone look at it without laughing.