English As She Is Spoke

Carolino made his phrase book by translating a Portuguese-French phrase book into English using a French-English dictionary. The fact that Carolino didn't know very much French complicated matters even further.

Confused? Pretend for a minute that you're Carolino. You know Portuguese and a little French. First, you translate Portuguese into French using a phrase book. Then you take that French and translate it to English word-for-word using a dictionary. The result? Well, it makes Babelfish look like Shakespeare.

In fact, the resulting phrase book is so humorous that it makes me crack up 150 years after it was written. The pamphlet was so popular in Britain that it ran to 10 editions. An American version was published by Mark Twain, who was so impressed by the book that he wrote an introduction in praise of it.

I am noding English As She Is Spoke in its entirety. I'll leave the nonsensical words and phrases to be defined by creative members of The Nodeshell Rescue Team.

Pedro Carolino, a Portuguese man, wrote a phrasebook in 1883 that translated between his native tongue into English, although he had little grasp of the English language. This phrasebook is considered the worst in the world, as in the Book of Heroic Failures by Stephen Pile. The book, which is called The New Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese and English was recently reprinted as English as She is Spoke.

Including the famous expression, The dog than bark no bite.

The interesting thing is that the inventor did not actually have a dictionary that translated Portuguese to English. Still, he did not let that stop him, and he ran Portuguese through a Portuguese-French and a French-English Dictionary. The remains have a certain quality, as in "To craunch a marmoset".

Some examples (starting with the dedication):

"We expect then, who the little book (for the care what we wrote him, and for her typographical correction) that may be worth the acception of the studious persons, and especially of the youth, at which we dedicate him particularly."

Familiar Phrases, Idiotisms and Proverbs:

Dress your hairs
This hat go well
Undress you to
Exculpate me by your brother's
She make the prude
Do you cut the hairs?
He has tost his all good "Nothing some money, nothing of Swiss
He eat to coaches
A take is better than two you shall have
The stone as roll not heap up not foam

Familiar Dialogues:

"Here is a horse who have bad looks. Give me another. I will not that. He not sall know to march, he is pursy, he is foundered. Don't you are ashamed to give me a jade as like? he is unshoed, he is with nails up."

This node was loosely taken from the Book of Heroic Failures by Stephen Pile (Book). It was changed to protect the (almost) innocent (mostly me).