English as She Is Spoke
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To experience one of the most delightfully disastrous attempts at language instruction, where every page offers unintentional comedy and a profound lesson in the pitfalls of translation.
Edition details
Book Summary
A Portuguese phrasebook intended to teach English, but instead becomes a legendary comedy of errors through wildly inaccurate translations. The earnest guide offers bizarre phrases, absurd dialogues, and mangled proverbs, making it an unintentional masterpiece of linguistic humor.
Written in the 19th century by Pedro Carolino, who apparently knew no English, this book was meant to help Portuguese and Brazilian youth learn English. It opens with a preface asserting its pedagogical value, then presents a vocabulary list filled with comical mistranslations (e.g., 'the stone as roll not he' for 'a rolling stone gathers no moss'). The core consists of forty-three dialogues covering everyday situations like dining, dressing, and shopping, but the phrasing is hilariously off—'Button me' for 'Button my coat' and 'I dead myself in envy to see her.' The book also includes 'Familiar Letters' attributed to famous writers, rendered nonsensically, and a section of 'Idiotisms and Proverbs' with literal translations like 'In the country of blinds, the one eyed men are kings.' Despite its earnest intent, the work's systematic errors undermine any educational value, turning it into a celebrated curiosity of linguistic absurdity and cultural misunderstanding.
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Narrative arc
Story tension across the book.
- Setup
- Breaking point
- Aftermath
- Closing
This passage represents the story's dramatic climax because the "Familiar Letters" section collapses the prete…
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Unknown Narrator
This narrator presides over a collection of comic anecdotes and dialogues, translating (or mistranslating) Portuguese wit into English of spectacular wrongness. The presiding tension is between earnest instructional intent and the accidental comedy that erupts from every sentence, as when a gout-ridden lord dismisses a physician for arriving on foot. The narrator's cheerful confidence in this broken medium is what makes the book's early arc so seductive: every page promises another collision between authority and absurdity.
Senhor Pedro Carolino
Carolino presents himself in the preface as a careful pedagogue, offering dialogues, proverbs, and a vocabulary for Portuguese and Brazilian youth eager to master English. His flaw is magnificent: he cannot actually speak the language he is teaching, and his scrupulous exactness produces phrases like 'the blind saw clearer than this that may have two eyes.' He matters because his sincere ambition is the engine of the book's charm — the gap between his confidence and his results is the whole show.
Cuttler
Cuttler moves through the book's conversational set pieces as a man of trade — fitting coats, discussing cloth by the ell, haggling over twenty franks. His world is one of small frictions: a garment that pinches the stomach, a customer who won't cheapen, a barber who is also a newsmonger. He matters because his mundane transactions give the mangled English somewhere to land, turning everyday errands into quiet disasters of language.
Swiss
A character referenced in the book's anecdotes.
John
A character appearing in familiar dialogues and letters.
Plato
A historical philosopher referenced in the book's proverbs.
Linguistic Absurdity
The book is a comedic masterpiece of mistranslation, where Portuguese-to-English phrases are rendered nonsensically, such as 'The stone as roll not heap up not foam' and 'To craunch the marmoset,' highlighting the chaos of language learning.
Cultural Misunderstanding
The author's attempt to create a practical conversation guide results in bizarre and inaccurate representations of English culture, including odd vocabulary lists like 'Chinaman' as a trade and 'The quater-grandfather' as a family relation.
Humor in Error
The book's unintentional humor stems from its earnest but flawed execution, with phrases like 'I dead myself in envy to see her' and 'He has a good beak' providing amusement through their literal and absurd translations.
Education and Authority
The preface and structure reveal a serious pedagogical intent, yet the book's errors undermine the authority of the author as a language instructor, satirizing the pretensions of educational texts.
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