An incomparable work of comic genius as it turns out, which has been reprinted many times and still has a cult following today. It has inspired many other spoof manuscripts, not to mention Monty Python's famous Hungarian Phrasebook sketch, and its unique beauty is summed up thus by none other than Mark Twain: "Nobody can add to the absurdity of this book, nobody can imitate it successfully, nobody can hope to produce its fellow; it is perfect." Read on to find out why I love this brilliantly bizarre book so much...
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| What lies beyond that cover is like no other book you've ever read |
The golden rule of translation is this: don't translate each word individually as you'll end up with nonsense that misses the point entirely, but instead translate the overall meaning of the phrase. Sadly that advice was ignored by a certain Pedro Carolino when in 1855 he published his magnum opus, English As She Is Spoke: the New Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese and English. It's supposed to be a straightforward Portuguese-English phrasebook for students travelling abroad but, as that ungrammatical title might suggest, is actually nothing of the sort and Carolino instead gave the world something oddly beautiful and singularly unique.
Writing a phrasebook is a noble goal, but there was just one small problem. Mr Carolino couldn't speak English, something you might imagine to be a prerequisite for the task he set himself, nor did he even own a Portuguese-English dictionary. He didn't let that stop him though, for what he did have was a Portuguese-French phrasebook and a French-English dictionary, and he reasoned that combining the two would inevitably result in a perfect Portuguese-English phrasebook despite appearing not to speak French either. Thus armed with entirely the wrong tools for the job, our intrepid hero would inadvertently create one of the most bizarre books ever written.
By first looking up the French version of the Portuguese phrase and then literally translating it word by word into English, without even the benefit of an English-speaking proofreader to check his work, Carolino invented a whole new language of complete and utter gibberish. Being a man of integrity though, he made sure to credit the author of his source phrasebook, one José da Fonseca. That's unfortunate as Fonseca has had to share the blame for English As She Is Spoke ever since, but his original work was perfectly coherent and Carolino was solely responsible for mangling it with his translation.
The preface sets the tone nicely. Without even a hint of irony, in very broken English he berates other phrasebooks for being full of mistakes and inaccuracies while asserting that he has taken great care to avoid such errors. Sorry Pedro, I'm afraid I find it hard to believe you when you say things like "For that reason we did put, with a scrupulous exactness, a great variety own expressions to english and portuguese idioms; without to attach us selves (as make some others) almost at a literal translation; translation what only will be for to accustom the portuguese pupils, or-foreign, to speak very bad any of the mentioned idioms". In fact, given that he appeared not to understand a single word of English, one wonders how he managed to write this at all.
Carolino starts off by listing words of common categories, helpfully allowing readers to describe their family by using such gems as "the gossip mistress", "the quater (sic) grandfather", "a relation" and "an relation". Popular trades include the porkshop-keeper, nailer, lochsmith (someone who maintains Scottish lakes?) or Chinaman (random casual racism alert), but not phrasebook writer strangely enough. He fares no better with "Woman objects" such as the busk, the Spindle and the skate, or diseases like the vomitory and the apoplexy that would surely be brought on just by reading this book. After all that it comes as less of a surprise than you might expect to learn that Mr Carolino believes the hedgehog, snail and wolf to be types of fish.
In the second chapter our ever-helpful author introduces some 'Familiar Phrases' to help readers strike up a conversation, including expressions we all use every day such as "go to send for", "dress your hairs" and "that is that I have think". He clearly didn't take his own advice to "apply you at the study during that you are young" but still wants you to "put your confidence at my". Things don't go well, and as the conversation progresses the other party soon takes offence at Pedro's attempts at polite chat when "he laughs at my nose, he jest by me", "he has spit in my coat", "he has scratch the face with hers nails" and finally "he does me some kicks". The language may be mangled but the violence is clear. Thus End First Part's.
Chapter three then presents 'Familiar Dialogues' for such everyday topics of conversation as "for to wish the good morning", "the books and of the reading", "to visit a sick" and "the field"(?). On the subject of the writing, he gives some insight into what went wrong, for "in this drawer, there is all that, falding stick, rule, scraper, saud, etc." but not an English dictionary that would have been much more useful For leisure, Carolino suggests such activities as "Here certainly a very good hunting" and "That pond it seems me many multiplied of fishes. Let us amuse rather to the fishing", but sadly "you mistake you, it is a frog!". I'm just disappointed he didn't catch a hedgehog with his fishing 'wand'.
Next up are some 'Familiar Letters' that, despite Carolino's insistence that his work is "clean of gallicisms, and despoiled phrases", are clearly of French origin and translated word for word from his French phrasebook. They weren't familiar to me in their original language and his translation does nothing to familiarise them to English speakers. As someone called Racine allegedly wrote to a Monsieur Vitart, "My uncle what will to treat her beshop in a great sumptuouness, he was go Avignon for to buy what one not should find there, and he had leave me the charge to provide all things". Make of that what you will, but I'm pretty sure it's not what Racine meant.
Having mastered all these familiar phrases, to further your friendship with English speakers you might want to tell an anecdote or two, and our good friend Pedro has thoughtfully provided a selection in his penultimate chapter. His obliviousness to the French origin of these anecdotes is betrayed by a clumsy attempt to literally translate a pun that only works in the French language: "The commander Forbin of Janson, being at a repast with a celebrated Boileau, had undertaken to pun him upon her name: "What name, told him, carry you thither? Boileau: I would wish better to call me Drink wine". The humour is totally lost in translation as it relies on the similarity of the name Boileau to the French for 'drink water' (bois l’eau), so it doesn't even work in proper English, yet alone Carolino's gobbledygook.
Carolino ends his magnificent manuscript with the aptly-named 'Idiotisms and Proverbs'. Among such idiotisms is the suggestion to build castles in Espagnish, this perhaps being the language the book is written in. He also urges his readers to burn the politeness and craunch the marmoset, which sound like weird words of encouragement that might be shouted by an over-enthusiastic gym instructor. Cats are a recurring theme here, with such feline-related advice as "cat scalded fear the cold water", "take out the live coals with the hand of the cat", "keep the chestnut of the fire with the cat foot", "to make paps for the cats", and of course "to buy cat in pocket".
The bizarre mix of English and occasional French vocabulary is spiced up still further with the addition of numerous made-up words that don't appear in any language, such as "furfur" and "rnler" to name just two. These are probably typos that went unnoticed thanks to his total ignorance of the language he was writing and refusal to employ a proofreader, but are so badly mangled and used in such nonsense contexts it's impossible to determine what he meant to write. The closest he ever came to a comprehensible English phrase was "he is beggar as a church rat", but at the other extreme what on earth is "He turns as a weath turcocl" supposed to mean?
The author shows a flash of unintentional self-awareness when he asks the reader "Have you understand that he says?". The answer to that question must be a resounding no I'm afraid. After wading through six chapters of his nonsense, I am catched cold in the brain and I have mind to vomit. You might think English As She Is Spoke was written as a joke, but it seems Pedro Carolino was deadly serious and I pity any unfortunate Portuguese student who tried to converse in English with only his inscrutable ramblings for guidance. Maybe he had the last laugh though: had he written a plain old comprehensible phrasebook he would probably be long forgotten, but instead his masterpiece has gone down in history as an extraordinary and inimitable piece of comedy gold.
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