Beschreibung
Produktdetails
Format
ePUB
Kopierschutz
Nein
Family Sharing
Nein
Text-to-Speech
Ja
Erscheinungsdatum
23.09.2026
Verlag
Waking Lion PressSeitenzahl
7 (Printausgabe)
Dateigröße
768 KB
Auflage
1. Auflage
Sprache
Englisch
EAN
9781434125668
In 1855 Pedro Carolino set out to write an English phrasebook for Portuguese travelers visiting England. The only problem was that he couldn't speak English. Undeterred by this minor setback, Carolino decided to base his guide on a respected Portuguese-French phrasebook written by José da Fonseca. He took the French translations of Portuguese, and used a French-English dictionary to translate those to English.
The result was an unintentional comedy of literal translation, as English phrases like "the walls have ears" became "the walls have hearsay" (via the Portuguese as paredes têm ouvidos), and "waiting for someone to open the door" became "to craunch the marmoset" (via a ridiculous misreading of archaic English, and the shape of the grotesque door knockers popular at the time).
The entire guide was quite large, and not only was it of no practical use as an actual phrasebook, but its length made it too much of a slog to appeal as a comedy. But its legend slowly grew, until in 1883 it was republished in an abridged form as a book of humor titled English as She Is Spoke (a phrase which, incidentally, doesn't appear in the book itself). The abridged edition, taking the comedic highlights from the long and tedious original, is the edition that became famous. This Standard Ebooks edition is based on that abridgment.
The book's absurd mistranslations were said to have made Lincoln laugh aloud when read to him by his secretary John Hay, and Mark Twain said that "nobody can add to the absurdity of this book, nobody can imitate it successfully, nobody can hope to produce its fellow; it is perfect."
A quick, delightfully absurd read for anyone who loves language gone gloriously wrong - you'll never look at a phrasebook the same way again.
The source for this public-domain ebook is Standard Ebooks (standardebooks.org). Ebooks from other sources often have typos, inconsistent spelling, missing accent marks, and missing punctuation. Ebooks from Standard Ebooks are proofread line by line against a scan of the original printed pages, then proofread again from cover to cover. They are also formatted and typeset following a professional-grade style manual, resulting in new editions supporting state-of-the-art ereader technology: automatic hyphenation, popup footnotes, complete and consistent metadata, high-resolution and scalable vector graphics, and ereader-compatible tables of contents. All of this makes the finished ebooks accurate, functional, and beautiful, a pleasure to read. (Waking Lion Press is not affiliated with or endorsed by Standard Ebooks.)
Noch keine Bewertungen vorhanden
Verfassen Sie die erste Bewertung zu diesem Artikel
Helfen Sie anderen Kundinnen und Kunden durch Ihre Meinung.
Kurze Frage zu unserer Seite
Vielen Dank für Ihr Feedback
Wir nutzen Ihr Feedback, um unsere Produktseiten zu verbessern. Bitte haben Sie Verständnis, dass wir Ihnen keine Rückmeldung geben können. Falls Sie Kontakt mit uns aufnehmen möchten, können Sie sich aber gerne an unseren Kund*innenservice wenden.
zum Kundenservice