English as She Is Spoke (1884) [pdf](exclassics.com) |
English as She Is Spoke (1884) [pdf](exclassics.com) |
[0] - https://archive.org/details/englishassheissp00applrich/page/...
Global communication and travel, to say nothing of media consumption, is much easier today. Many more Portuguese or Brazilian people have easy access to English. But back then, someone who didn't even speak English could publish this phrase book and appear credible.
There are so many that there's now another genre of reacting to this bad advice.
English as She Is Spoke - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25784683 - Jan 2021 (129 comments)
"I go make some shoppings"
"Time for go"
Naturally, the rest of the gang picked them up and used them. I still say them to the consternation of others.
[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20170115091456/http://winterson....
This might legitimately be one of my favorite pieces of entertainment in existence, if only because of the delivery and emotion behind nonsense idiom mistranslations. It's glorious.
Even after seeing it many times, this old classic still makes me laugh: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EShUeudtaFg
> O novo guia da conversação em portuguez e inglez, 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 a co-author. It was intended as a Portuguese–English conversational guide or phrase book. However, because the "English" translations provided are usually inaccurate or unidiomatic, it is regarded as a classic source of unintentional humour in translation.
> The humour largely arises 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 chover a cântaros as "raining in jars", when an analogous English idiom is available in the form of "raining buckets".
> It is widely believed that Carolino could not speak English and that a French–English dictionary was used to translate an earlier Portuguese–French phrase book, …
Really? Which part of the UK does that come from. Where I come from *Nort Wilts.) the related phrase would be "It's bucketing down!" but I've never heard anyone say "It's raining buckets!".
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005195.h...
Probably not what the above poster was referring to, but here's a sample:
https://www.reddit.com/r/engrish/comments/q1g8sh/a_restauran...
https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/pedro-carolino_jose-da-fon...
Probably quite a few of them are no longer common in English either by now, which makes computing the inverse harder.
>"With tongue one go to Roma"
= you can achieve anything with good communication skills
>"It want to beat the iron during it is hot"
= seize the opportunity while you can
>"to come back to their muttons"
you say "let's go back to our sheep" when you realize you digressed
“Strike while the iron is hot” is a well known English saying as well. Guess blacksmith wisdom is universal.
And one that Hacker news and Silicon Valley didn’t coin but made famous is in this maybe, sorta:
> A bad arrangement is better than a process.
Which can be stretched to ‘Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good’ or ‘real engineers ship’!
The original Portuguese expression would be "A cavalo dado não se olha os dentes"
How did you find that?
Now if someone can figure out the source, that would be even more amazing.
Leibniz -> ライプニッツ (ripunittsu) -> Ripunitz
Times aren't that different!
Some friends and I used to use "spits in the coat" to express the superiority of one thing over another, e.g.
"Framework 1 spits in the coat of Framework 2". "Sports Team 1 spits in the coat of Sports Team 2."
Also, "like such as," from the old "Miss Teen USA" viral video, has stuck in my craw to the point that its use is unconscious (though still intended humorously).
See an entry from Charles Scholl, Geroge Mcaulaly et al's "A Phraseological Dictionary of Commercial Correspondence in the English, German, French & Spanish Languages, with an Appendix Containing Lists of Commercial Abbreviations, Geographical Names, the Principal Articles of Commerce", published in 1891:
"Needful: he will do what is needful under the circumstances. We rely on your doing the needful for the protection of our interests. With which will you please do the needful. With which we shall do the needful, and credit you for the amount in due course. I shall do the needful at maturity. I enclose draft for 100 pounds at two months, to which I will thank you to do the needful"
Another entry from a law journal published in 1833 in UK: "The letter was immediately given by the bankrupt to the defendant, with directions that as the voyage was altered, he, the defendant, would do the needful."
> "I go make some shoppings"
As a Romanian living in the London, I hear English mistakes from various nationalities and I'm surprised how similar some are to Romanian, even when there's no connection. In this case, in Romanian we also word-for-word say "to make shoppings".
It often feels like English is the odd man out. :)
As an example, a Lithuanian was showing me a shortcut. He said "press alt plus ii". So I press "Alt+I". He chuckled and said "No, alt plus the English ii". So I pressed "Alt+E". The great vowel shift left vowels unrecognizable to other languages (/iː/ became /aɪ/, /eː/ became /iː/, ...).
Japanese person "Ohio gazimus!"
GI: "Well, Kentucky gazimus to you, too!"
or:
GI: "No toucha my mustache!"
Things went the other way, too. My dad would collect Japanese flyers aimed at GIs with horribly mangled English.
I have never independently confirmed if this was an actual saying in Iran or not. (Google is not helpful.)
In which dialect of English is that an idiomatic expression? Never heard it before (en-gb native). What's the interpreted meaning??
Google EN->JP doesn’t get it right, and also oddly translates the two sentences into different politeness levels.
"Der ganze Laden ist voller Schlamm." (German)
But if you place the cursor on "Laden" ("shop") it'll offer you alternatives including "Ort" ("place", i.e.: "There is mud all over the place"). The problem here is that what's meant depends on context: if you are a shopkeeper speaking after a downpour, your entire shop might indeed be full of mud your customers have dragged in. (Moreover, "der ganze Laden" can be used in German in much the same way as "all over the shop" in English, i.e. referring to any sort of building or establishment.)
More to the point perhaps, here is the output DeepL produces for the Portuguese phrases quoted in the table of "Phrase examples":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_as_She_Is_Spoke#Phrase...
1. "Walls have ears. Alternatives: The walls have ears. Walls do have ears." (1:0 for DeepL.)
2. "He rides pussycats. Alternatives: Walk with pussycats. Come on, pussycat. He's got pussy." (1:1. BIG FAIL.)
3. "Is the road safe? Alternatives: How safe is the road? Is the road safe ? Is the road safe for you? (2:1 for DeepL.)
4. "He can ride a horse. Alternatives: He knows how to ride a horse. You can ride a horse. You know how to ride a horse. (3:1 for DeepL. Note that the Portuguese can indeed mean either "you" or "he".)
5. "He who remains silent consents. Alternatives: He who is silent is consenting. He who is silent is consented. Those who keep silent consent." (4:1 for DeepL.)
6. "What does he do? Alternatives: What is he doing? What's he doing? What does it do?" (5:1 for DeepL.)
7. "I feel like vomiting." Alternatives: I feel like throwing up. I feel like puking." (6:1 for DeepL.)
8. "This lake looks pretty fishy to me. Let's go fishing for fun." (Not brilliant. 6:2.)
9. "The servant ploughed the royal ground." (Acceptable. "Earth", "land", "soil" etc. offered as alternatives when you click on "ground". 7:2.)
10. "I know what I should do or what is incumbent upon me." (Acceptable. Offers "what is my responsibility" when you click on "incumbent". 8:2 for DeepL.)
11. "I earned more than thirty thousand réis. Alternatives: I earned over thirty thousand réis. I won more than thirty thousand réis. I won over thirty thousand réis." (Perfect. 9:2 for DeepL.)
12. "Did you understand or did you understand what I said? Alternatives: Did you understand what I said? Did you understand me? (Perfect. 10:2 for DeepL. Note that the repeition is there in the Portuguese: it ask the same thing twice, in two past tense forms that aren't distinguished in English (formal/informal forms).)
13. "He's a good sport, as far as I can see. Look how I've tamed him." (I don't think the translation in Wikipedia is all that brilliant. "From what I see, he kicks"?? Alternatives offered by DeepL when clicking on "good sport" include: "He's got balls from what I can see. Look how I've tamed him." Inconclusive. Let's call it 10.5 : 2.5.)
So, not perfect, but a lot less funny than "English as She Is Spoke".
If you search Google Books for "Do you not be happy with me as the translator of the books of you" and click on the Preview or Full View button you should see it in several places
I know specifically that English skills are far from universal in the Portuguese speaking world. But it's way easier and more common than even 30 years ago. So are you really saying it's the same as the 1870s? Please.
Do people actually say that? Seems very long winded.
batlefe pend ki letencoshow
which is more manageable.
(However, it might have come to US English from Spanish which is pretty close to Portuguese and thus ultimately from the same source as the book?)
Steve Jobs fue despedido de Apple. O Steve Jobs foi despedido da Apple. Steve Jobs a été renvoyé d'Apple. Steve Jobs wurde von Apple gefeuert. Steve Jobs werd ontslagen bij Apple.
Google Translate too (very similar results).
Sources:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/all%20over%20the%...
Over time, isolated from the cultural changes happening to the English world, it developed in it's own way. Like the albino and blind animals evolved in the seclusion of an isolated cave system.
Today, the best way to observe this secluded language branch is to read official Indian government announcements.
It has started to meld back into the main branch [0][1] as younger and younger, more exposed to the global English culture, take over responsibilities.
[0] https://pib.gov.in/PressReleseDetailm.aspx?PRID=1888208
[1] https://indianrailways.gov.in/railwayboard/uploads/directora...
What about English speakers in Indian TV, movies, and on YouTube - which I assume might be more popular fare for an Indian audience?
I worry a lot of language getting will be lost in an effort to reduce it to something a machine can handle.
(In other sentences using this idiom, however, DeepL does fail miserably. If you ask it to translate, "There's blooming flowers all over the bloody shop ...", e.g., the results are not pretty. So, yeah. Some way to go.)
Well said, love it!
Along similar lines, expect a spelling convergence of "wary" and "weary" in the next 5-10 years due to so many people not knowing the difference between the two, not bothering to check, and perpetuating confusion by using the wrong one in their own writing.
"To comprise" is deployed incorrectly more often than correctly. Which is silly since, when used incorrectly, you could have simply used "to be composed of" (which is the thing people are confusing it for)—there's no benefit to using "comprised" there, all its elegance and subtle shade of meaning are lost anyway when you jam it into that clunky phrase as a perfect synonym for "composed". I think that's one of those fake-fancy abuses of language from business folks, leeching into everyday language. What synergy!
The apt adjective, rather than various words and modifiers expressing degrees of good or badness—many of which used to express more, but no longer do, as "massive" or "awesome"—seems to be an endangered species.
Awkward use of "less than" inexplicably replacing the word "inferior" in some circles. "We must ensure none of the children feel 'less than'". In the words of my generation: "LOL WTF?"
Anyone have handy any studies on vocabulary among Americans? It looks to have markedly decreased over the last few decades, but I worry I may be falling for the same kind of bias that seems to make everyone think everything's getting worse all the time. Popular writing gives me the impression it's written for an audience with a smaller vocabulary than in, say, the 1950s or 1960s, though.
While we're on the subject - more then and less then are becoming very common due to the similarity in how than/then are pronounced in US accented English.
My understanding is that chitterlings is the correct spelling and chitlins is the correct pronunciation, but so many people spell it chitlins that it has become an acceptable form of the written word.
"Perpetrate" and "perpetuate" are two words frequently confused by native speakers (in this context, you could have meant either, and I assume you meant "perpetuate").
"Messi [a footballer] was all over the shop"
might be said if he was regularly out of position in match, or performed uncharacteristically unskillfully. The verb is implied here.
If you say "mud was all over the shop" then the only interpretation I know is that a literal shop has mud over [the inside of] it. That's not idiomatic; it's just plain language.
It could work if you were talking about mud doing something unexpected; maybe a misbehaving oil well.
What's your interpretation of the full expression "there's mud all over the shop"?
Unless the conversation already included references to a building where one buys things it would just mean "there's mud all over the place".
This particular spelling mixup seems unlikely to persist because people know and understand both words, and it's considered basic knowledge, like your/you're, and I would expect similar memes and derision for people who don't attempt to distinguish them.
I care less about this one than others, though, since there's little risk of this replacing the ordinary use of the word and making the language less expressive (as in the case of "envious" vs "jealous"). "Avoid doing this" remains good advice, but it's not so bad as errors go. I mainly brought it up as an example of incorrect use surpassing correct use.
It's in a similar class to using "X and I" where it should be "X and me". It causes little harm, most of the time, as far as hindering communication, but getting it right is still preferable to getting it wrong, which means that any decent guide will classify it as a mistake, unless (as is always the case) one means to commit the error, for some reason. That's the case despite the incorrect-I error having, I'm sure, a longer and more widespread history than "to be comprised of"—the history doesn't save it from being something to avoid. Maybe some day it will.
[EDIT] Sorry, that was needlessly curt. I don't think we actually disagree that much anyway—I'm not advancing prescriptivism, and this issue doesn't bother me that much (I was just using it as an example!), though I do notice it. I can find support in the dictionary for my use of "incorrect" here— :-) —but it was probably an incorrect word to have used to express what I was getting at in the first place, and my poor choice there may have been the cause of much of this exchange.
Oh well -
Someone upthread implied that the purpose of a descriptivist dictionary is to help readers/hearers to understand unfamiliar words, not to guide writers/speakers in correct usage. Thing is, they're all descriptivist. There are opinionated guides like Fowler (and the subject of this article! /on-topic), but I don't know of an opinionated lexicon.
