No-one in the world has ever written a more phascinating phrasebook than the inimitable Pedro Carolino. In 1883, Mr. Carolino wrote an English-Portuguese phrasebook with absolutely no knowledge of the English language!
The New Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese and English, (highly recommended to any Portuguese tourist travelling abroad, I hasten to add!) can now be found under its reprinted title: English as She is Spoke.
The dedication is brief:
"We expect then, who the little book (for the care what we wrote him, and for her typographical correction) that may be worth the acceptation of the studious persons, and especially of the youth, at which we dedicate him particularly."
The book begins with some 'Familiar phrases' without which any Portuguese holiday-maker should leave home:
Dress your hairs
This hat go well
Undress you to
Exculpate me by your brother's
She make the prude
Do you cut the hairs?
He has tost his all good
The next section, 'Familiar Dialogues', includes such sub-chapters as 'For to wish the good morning' and 'For to visit a sick'. (A sick 'what' is anybody's guess!)
Dialogue 18, 'For to ride a horse', begins:
'Here is a horse who have bad looks. Give me another. I will not that. He not sall know to march, he is pursy, he is foundered. Don't you are ashamed to give me a jade as like? He is undshoed, he is with nails up.'
(With nails up!???)
Carolino then offers this 'Anecdote' which is sure to hold any English-speaking person alive totally spellbound:
'One eyed was laied against a man which had good eyes that he saw better than him. The party was accepted. I had gain, over said the one eyed; why I see you two eyes, and you not look me who one.'
(If anyone speaks 'Jibberese', please! I'd love a translation!)
It seems almost impossible that Carolino could top himself, but he somehow manages to pull a few more tricks from his sleeves with his 'Idiotisms and proverbs':
Nothing some money, nothing of Swiss
He eat to coaches
A take is better than two you shall have
The stone as roll not heap up not foam
(and, of course, the immortal 'Idiotism' favourite)
The dog than bark not bite
Such genius does not come easily! And Pedro had plenty of help! You see, he didn't have a Portuguese-English dictionary. He did have, however, a Portuguese-French dictionary and a French-English dictionary by which he was able to re-write the English language. His new language is truly original and a thing of beauty. I mean, really, is there anything in the English that you and I know which can equal the vividness of 'To craunch a marmoset'?
