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    English As She Is Spoke
    English As She Is Spoke
    English As She Is Spoke
    Ebook47 pages38 minutes

    English As She Is Spoke

    By Jose de Fonseca and Pedro Carolino

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    About this ebook

    In 1855, when Jose da Fonseca and Pedro Carolino wrote an English phrasebook for Portuguese students, they faced just one problem: they didn't know any English. Even worse, they didn't own an English-to-Portuguese dictionary. What they did have, though, was a Portuguese-to-French dictionary, and a French-to-English dictionary. The linguistic train wreck that ensued is a classic of unintentional humor, now revived in the first newly selected edition in a century. Armed with Fonseca and Carolino's guide, a Portuguese traveler can insult a barber ("What news tell me? All hairs dresser are newsmonger"), complain about the orchestra ("It is a noise which to cleve the head"), go hunting ("let aim it! let make fire him"), and consult a handy selection of truly mystifying "Idiotisms and Proverbs."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherStart Publishing LLC
    Release dateNov 1, 2012
    ISBN9781625580313
    English As She Is Spoke

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    Reviews for English As She Is Spoke

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      An amusing collection of material.
    • 4/5
      This entertaining historical artefact neatly illustrates that comic Babelfish translations are not a recent phenomenon. Language - it's there to trip you up.
    • 5/5
      It's probably impossible to improve on Mark Twain's review of this timeless tome, and I won't even try. Suffice it to say that time has borne out Twain's prediction that as long as English is spoken, this volume will be circulated, printed, and read to gales of laughter and astonishment. Contains the most evocative phrase ever written in English; "To Craunch a Marmoset."
    • 5/5
      This book was first published more than 150 years ago, as a serious attempt to provide English/Portuguese words and phrases for the adventurous Portuguese tourist. Unfortunately, the author did not speak any English, and relied on TWO dictionaries to get to French and then to English. The result is hilariously inaccurate, often inappropriate, and totally believable.It is very reminiscent of the Monty Python sketch The Hungarian Phrasebook, in which bizarre and often lascivious translations of simple day-to-day phrases cause the publisher to appear in a British court. After several of the more inappropriate phrases are read into the record, he pleads incompetence. My money's on this book as the inspiration.That this was ever accepted by a publisher speaks reams about the book business. That it survives today is a tribute to a sense of humor and a sense of the absurd. This book will never be obsolete or out of date. It's a minor treasure.
    • 4/5
      What happens when you use a Portuguese-French phrasebook and a French/English dictionary (and zero knowledge of English) to make a Portuguese-English phrasebook? This happens. It's hard to pick a favorite "common" English phrase, but I am especially amused by "You hear the bird's gurgling?" For extra giggles, read aloud. In short, this book really craunched the marmoset.
    • 3/5
      How could I have never come across this unique book before now? I won't kid you. It won't have you rolling on the floor in laughter, but you will definitely crack of few smiles as you read it. It is sort of like the Ed Wood of language books. The author is really earnest, but he just doesn't know what he is doing!After reading this, you will surely want to craunch the marmoset and burn the politeness.
    • 3/5
      This is an odd little book. It is purported to be a Portuguese to English phrasebook written by "men to which English was entirely unknown" in the 19th century. Apparently this was accomplished with the aid of a Portuguese/French dictionary and a French/English dictionary. Between the tragic grammar, bizarre word choice and inexplicable statements demanded by 19th century living you end up with nuggets like this:"These apricots and these peaches make me and to come water in mouth.""The pantaloons is to narrow.""Is it complete this parlour furniture in damask crimson?""Don't you fear the privateers?""I shall you neat also your mouth, and you could care entertain it clean, for to preserve the mamel of the teeth; i could give you a opiate for to strengthen the gums."I'm about 85% percent sure this book is what it claims to be. But I can't completely believe it because it was published by McSweeney's.
    • 4/5
      This is a horribly hilarious Portuguese-English dictionary written by two 19th century Portuguese scholars who couldn't speak English. They used a Portuguese-French dictionary and a French-English dictionary to write their book, with predictable results. Mark Twain had this comment about the book: "Nobody can add to the absurdity of this book, nobody can imitate it successfully, nobody can hope to produce its fellow; it is perfect."A couple of typical phrases, from the section on fishing:"Silence! there is a superb perch! Give me quick the rod, Ah! there is, it is a lamprey.""That pond it seems me many multiplied of fishes. Let us amuse rather to the fishing.""Try it! I desire that you may be more happy and more skilful who acertain fisher, what have fished all day without to can take nothing."English As She Is Spoke is a great read for a rainy day, and an ideal gift to lift someone's spirits.

    Book preview

    English As She Is Spoke - Jose de Fonseca

    Introduction

    FROM the time of Shakspere downwards, wits and authors innumerable have made themselves and the public more or less merry at the expense of the earlier efforts of the student of a strange tongue; but it has been reserved to our own time for a soi disant instructor to perpetrate—at his own expense—the monstrous joke of publishing a Guide to Conversation in a language of which it is only too evident that every word is utterly strange to him. The Teutonic sage who evolved the ideal portrait of an elephant from his inner consciousness was a commonplace, matter-of fact person compared with the daring visionary who conjures up a complete system of language from the same fertile but untrustworthy source. The piquancy of Senhor Pedro Carolino’s New Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese and English is enhanced by the evident bona fides and careful compilation of the little book, or as Pedro himself gravely expresses it, for the care what we wrote him, and for her typographical correction.

    In short, the New Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese and English was written with serious intent, and for the purpose of initiating Portuguese students into the mysteries of the English language. The earlier portions of the book are divided into three columns, the first giving the Portuguese; the second what, in the opinion of the author, is the English equivalent; and the third the English equivalent phonetically spelt, so that the tyro may at the same time master our barbarous phraseology and the pronunciation thereof. In the second part of the work the learner is supposed to have sufficiently mastered the pronunciation of the English language, to be left to his own devices.

    A little consideration of the shaping of our author’s English phrases leads to the conclusion that the materials used have been a Portuguese-French phrase-book and a French-English dictionary. With these slight impedimenta has the daring Lusitanian ventured upon the unknown deep of a strange language, and the result, to quote again from the Preface, May be worth the acceptation of the studious persons, and especially of the Youth, at which we dedicate him particularly, but will at all events contribute not a little to the Youth’s hilarity.

    To begin with the vocabulary; it is perhaps hardly fair to expect a professor of languages to trouble himself with Degrees of Kindred, still,

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