English as She is Spoke

ENGLISH AS SHE IS SPOKE
(O Novo Guia da Conversacao em Portuguez e Inglez)
By
Jose da Fonseca and Pedro Carolino


Introduction to the British edition
by
James Millington

FROM the time of Shakspere downwards, wits and authors
innumerable have made themselves and the public more or less merry
at the expense of the earlier efforts of the student of a strange
tongue; but it has been reserved to our own time for a soi-disant
instructor to perpetrate -- at his own expense -- the monstrous
joke of publishing a Guide to Conversation in a language of which
it is only too evident that every word is utterly strange to him.
The Teutonic sage who evolved the ideal portrait of an elephant
from his "inner consciousness" was a commonplace, matter-of-fact
person compared with the daring visionary who conjures up a
complete system of language from the same fertile but
untrustworthy source. The piquancy of Senhor Pedro Carolino's New
Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese and English is enhanced by
the evident bona fides and careful compilation of "the little
book," or as Pedro himself gravely expresses it, "for the care
what we wrote him, and for her typographical correction."

In short, the New Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese and
English was written with serious intent, and for the purpose of
initiating Portuguese students into the mysteries of the English
language. The earlier portions of the book are divided into three
columns, the first giving the Portuguese; the second what, in the
opinion of the author, is the English equivalent; and the third
the English equivalent phonetically spelt, so that the tyro may at
the same time master our barbarous phraseology and the
pronunciation thereof. In the second part of the work the learner
is supposed to have sufficiently mastered the pronunciation of the
English language, to be left to his own devices.

A little consideration of the shaping of our author's English
phrases leads to the conclusion that the materials used have been
a Portuguese-French phrase-book and a French-English dictionary.
With these slight impedimenta has the daring Lusitanian ventured
upon the unknown deep of a strange language, and the result, to
quote again from the Preface, "May be worth the acceptation of the
studious persons, and especially of the Youth, at which we
dedicate him particularly," but will at all events contribute not
a little to the Youth's hilarity.

To begin with the vocabulary; it is perhaps hardly fair to
expect a professor of languages to trouble himself with "Degrees
of Kindred," still, such titles as "Gossip mistress, a relation,
an relation, a guardian, an guardian, the quatergrandfather, the
quater-grandmother," require some slight elucidation, and passing
over the catalogue of articles of dress which are denominated
"Objects of Man" and "Woman Objects," one may take exception to
"crumbs" and "groceries," which are inserted among plates and
cruets as ordinary table garniture.

Among what are denominated "Eatings" we find "some wigs," "a
dainty dishes," "a mutton shoulder," "a little mine," "hog-fat,"
and "an amelet": the menu is scarcely appetising, especially when
among "Fishes and Shellfishes" our Portuguese Lucullus sets down
the "hedgehog," "snail," and "wolf." After this such trifles as
"starch" arranged under the heading of "Metals and Minerals," and
"brick" and "whitelead" under that of "Common Stones" fall almost
flat; but one would like to be initiated into the mysteries of
"gleek," "carousal," and "keel," which are gravely asserted to be
"Games." Among "Chivalry Orders" one has a glimmering of what is
intended by "Saint Michaelmas" and "Very-Merit"; but under the
heading of "Degrees," although by a slight exercise of the
imagination we can picture to ourselves "a quater master," "a
general to galeries," or even a "vessel captain," we are entirely
nonplussed by "a harbinger" and "a parapet."

Passing on to "Familiar Phrases," most of which appear to be
old friends with new faces, Senhor Carolino's literal cribs from
the French become more and more apparent, in spite of his boast in
the Preface of being "clean of gallicisms and despoiled phrases."
"Apply you at the study during that you are young" is doubtless an
excellent precept, and as he remarks further on "How do you can it
to deny"; but study may be misdirected, and in the moral, no less
than in the material world, it is useful to know "That are the