Talk:English as She Is Spoke

Full text isn't

The "full text" (link to everything2.com in the "External Links" section) is not. It contains only the English portion of the book, not the Portugese "translations". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.182.119.150 (talk) 17:28, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

surparse

Stephen Pile mentions this work in the Book of Heroic Failures, and says of it "who can surparse the unrivalled beauty of the phrase "To craunch a marmoset"?"'

Because it is supposed to be a direct quotation I haven't changed it, but since the word "surparse" doesn't actually exist I am requesting that someone with a copy of the book check to see if it is in there as that (in which case add [sic] to the quote) or correct it to "surpass" (which I assume what is meant). MrWeeble Talk Brit tv 20:37, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

My copy reads "Is there anything in conventional English which could equal the vividness of 'To craunch a marmoset'?". I think I'll make the article say that. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nick8325 (talk • contribs) 17:03, 20 January 2007

I vill not buy this rrrrecord

This seems like it must have inspired the famous Hungarian Phrasebook sketch in Monty Python. I can't back that up, of course, but, any thoughts? 66.167.141.43 05:14, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Could be. -- Derek Ross | Talk 21:55, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

It did. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.20.20.85 (talk) 15:24, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Item that shouldn't be included

"What o'clock is it?" would be a perfectly valid way of asking the time in English in 1854 [1]. I've removed this entry. Tevildo 20:28, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Broken Portuguese or moar broken English?

Inglês como ele é falado, which would be a rather informal expression even in the much more liberal contemporary Portuguese language (the overwhelmingly majority of people don't understand nothing or almost nothing of what is said in the Brazilian national anthem, I only started to understand more than half of it myself with an English translation), would translate literally as "English as he is spoke" (because terms for languages and ethnicities are gender neutral, so one automatically give it a masculine connotation, as would do in any plurality of persons — i.e. Japanese people of both genders are collectively called os japoneses, even if there are 19 women and only one man; only if the man is out of the group it would be as japonesas: machismo explained by the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis at its best).

In this sense, never with an article (unless in the typical colloquial speech of worker and middle class sociolects of most Portuguese dialects, and among everyone in Brazil — even in the media we can see frequent grammar errors): O inglês can only translate as "the Englishman". If I am not wrong, the inglês, when refering to the language, is an abstract subject, and despite giving masculine undertones to the verb's conjugation, using the o article is not possible, which gives a significance of "the English one".

[A] língua inglesa como ela é falada would in its place give someone "[The] English language as she is spoke" literally. The article should always be used in educated speech (a language is a concrete subject), it is also nothing usual to delete colloquially.

As such, English As She Is Spoke is much likely an error in itself, because of very explicit rules on gender/articles. Is it worth of mention? Lguipontes (talk) 11:52, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

As far as I know, "English As She Is Spoke" was chosen as a title by the English publisher, not the original Portuguese one. It's a play on the book's nature, full of mistakes; the correct English sentence would be "English As It Is Spoken". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.136.229.72 (talk) 16:02, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

This book was published in 1800s. "Spoke" is marked as an archaic past participle of "speak" in the dictionary, so chances are it was grammatically correct back then. "She" is the correct usage if there is anthropomorphism. --24.193.51.248 (talk) 09:39, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Abraham Lincoln

"The book is given as one example of many diversions that President Abraham Lincoln used to lighten his heart and mind from the weight of the Civil War and his cabinet's political infighting.[10]"

"Publication Date 1883"

Either Wikipedia or Doris Kearns Goodwin has a problem. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.171.184.100 (talk) 19:28, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

The American Civil War was from 1861 to 1865. The publication date of 1883 that you refer to is for English As She Is Spoke (from which the Portuguese has been removed). Carolino's Portuguese-English phrasebook "O Novo Guia da Conversação, em Português e Inglês" was published in 1855. This information appears in the article's subsection entitled "Publication history". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.146.53.23 (talk) 14:36, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Goodwin's book cites Frederick W Seward, who cites his father's 1864 letter mentioning Lincoln's encounter with the book decades before it was published as "English As She Is Spoke". Frederick Seward notes Lincoln enjoyed the book before it had "become famous" under the new title. Tvquizphd (talk) 03:27, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Pedro Carolino: prankster, conman or stark raving mad? Was the original Portuguese-French phrasebook meant as a joke?

1) I find it hard to believe that Pedro Carolino didn't know that his Portuguese-English phrasebook was a little bit faulty, which leads me to think that he was a prankster, a conman or stark raving mad. Are there any other options? (Not a rhetorical question). If he was a prankster, was his publisher in on the joke? (I'm talking here about the 1855 publication of "O Novo Guia da Conversação, em Português e Inglês", not the 1883 publication of "English As She Is Spoke" which was clearly published as a joke). His publisher either didn't check the accuracy of his translation or they knew it was faulty and published the phrasebook anyway to make some money. Are there any other plausible explanations as to how this phrasebook came about?

2) Considering the weirdness/randomness of the vocab lists and the bizarre, made-up conversations, the original Portuguese-French phrasebook by José da Fonseca has got to be a joke, doesn't it? Or am I mistaken? Not that I've read it - I'm just basing that conclusion on English As She Is Spoke from which the Portuguese has been removed. The content is so mind-boggingly bizarre I'm assuming that da Fonseca was just having a laugh. Or perhaps he too was a conman or mad? And what about *his* publisher? Were they in on the joke, if it was indeed a joke? If not, did they even check the content? If they did, did they know the phrasebook was bizarre but published it anyway?

The weirdness of the phrasebook's content is evident from the get-go. In the section entitled "Of the Man", there are the following entries: The brain, The brains [Why is this on the list?], The fat of the leg [Again, why is this on the list and what's the Portuguese or French this translates?], The ham [= the thigh?], The inferior lip [presumably the bottom lip, the lower lip], The superior lip [presumably the top lip, the upper lip], The marrow, The reins [an archaic word for kidneys]

Aside from the fact that this is a vocab list with none of the words used in context as is usual with a phrasebook, why such a short, bizarre list? Assuming this is meant to be a list of body parts (and a weird one at that), why not start with obvious candidates such as torso, head, arms, hands, legs, feet? The lower lip is very specific, yet head, face or mouth aren't listed. And in what sort of universe do people need to know *any* of these words in a phrasebook (phrasebooks are designed for tourists). What kind of conversations did da Fonseca imagine people would be having?

And the conversations beggar belief. In the section entitled "Familiar Dialogues", we have this specimen:

For to wish the good morning: How does your father do? He is very well. I am very delight of it. Were is it? I shall come back soon, I was no came that to know how you are.

Surely the first entry should be "Good morning!" (or rather "Bom dia"/"Bonjour"), but that's nowhere in sight. Who's going to ask a stranger how their father is doing? What would the response be? A confused look? An anguished look? What kind of messed-up phrasebook is this? I'm talking about content here, not translation. So if it wasn't published as a joke, what plausible explanation is there for its existence? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.146.53.23 (talk) 14:26, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

I think you're severely underestimating the occurrence of postillion sentences in such phrasebooks... Double sharp (talk) 14:03, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

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