, commonly known by the name English as She Is Spoke, is a 19th-century book written by Pedro Carolino, with some editions crediting José da Fonseca as co-author. It was intended as a PortugueseâÂÂEnglish conversational guide book or phrase book. However, it is today regarded entirely as a classic source of unintentional humour in translation because the provided translations are usually inaccurate or unidiomatic.
The humour arises largely from Carolino's indiscriminate use of literal translation, which has led to many idiomatic expressions being translated ineptly. For example, Carolino translates the Portuguese phrase "" as "What o'clock is it?", when an analogous English phrase is available in the form of "What time is it?" or "What's the time?"
It is widely believed that Carolino could not speak English and that an unknown FrenchâÂÂEnglish dictionary was used to translate the earlier PortugueseâÂÂFrench phrase book , written by José da Fonseca. Carolino likely added Fonseca's name to the book without the latter's permission in an attempt to give it some credibility. The PortugueseâÂÂFrench phrase book is a competent work free of the defects that characterize the PortugueseâÂÂEnglish one, but Carolino's use of literal translation on idiomatic or otherwise non-literal phrases leads to poor translation.
The title English as She Is Spoke was given to the book in its 1883 republication, but the phrase does not appear in the original phrasebook, nor does the word "spoke".
Mark Twain said of English as She Is Spoke "Nobody can add to the absurdity of this book, nobody can imitate it successfully, nobody can hope to produce its fellow; it is perfect."
Stephen Pile mentions this work in The Book of Heroic Failures, commenting: "Is there anything in conventional English which could equal the vividness of to a marmoset?" The original has "to craunch the marmoset", an entry rendered in Portuguese as esperar horas e horas, "to wait for hours and hours", in the book's "Idiotisms and Proverbs" section. This is the author's attempt to translate the French slang idiomatic expression , used to indicate "waiting patiently for someone to open a door". refers to a "knocking" or "rapping" sound, and was a term for the grotesque door knockers in vogue at the time. "Craunch" is an archaic term meaning 'to chew' or 'crunch'. In Modern French, usually means "to crunch" (see, e.g., croque monsieur); its use in this idiom is a survival from the Middle French meaning of / , which meant "to slap, hit, strike".
Tristan Bernard wrote a very short comedy with a similar name, (1899). Ionesco's (1950) is mostly made of lines used out-of-context from inter-lingual conversation books. British comedy television series Monty Python's Flying Circus made use of the theme of the a mis-translating phrase book in the sketch "Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook" (1970), which may have been inspired by English as She Is Spoke.
In addition to the examples above, Carolino managed to create a number of words which added to the book's unintentionally comic effect. Many can be found in the "Familiar Dialogues" and "Idiotisms and Proverbs" sections.
The phrase inspired some other publications, notably:
The phrase English as she is spoke is nowadays used allusively, in a form of linguistic play, as a stereotypical example of bad English grammar.
In January 1864, then US President Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of State William H. Seward laughed as Lincoln's private secretary John Hay read aloud from the book. The book has been cited as one example of many diversions that Lincoln used to lighten his heart and mind from the weight of the US Civil War and his cabinet's political infighting.
In Jerome K. Jerome's book Three Men on the Bummel, set in the late 1800s, the character George comedically tries to use a badly written GermanâÂÂEnglish phrasebook to do some shopping and errands around London.
In the Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch "Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook", a man unknowingly causes trouble by reading from a HungarianâÂÂEnglish phrasebook with deliberately mistranslated phrases that are absurd or inappropriate. The sketch ends with the publisher of the book being questioned in court; he pleads "incompetence".
The English prog rock band Cardiacs used passages from the book in their 1999 album Guns, most notably in the songs "Cry Wet Smile Dry" and "Sleep All Eyes Open."
A subtle reference occurs in Series 3, Episode 10 of the series Agatha Christie's Poirot, "The Affair at the Victory Ball". This episode ends with Poirot offering to give Inspector Japp "my personal copy of 'The English as She Should be Spoken.'"