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''English As She Is Spoke'' is the common name of a 19th-century book written by Pedro Carolino, and falsely additionally credited to José da Fonseca, which was intended as a Portuguese–English conversational guide or phrase book, but is regarded as a classic source of unintentional humour, as the given English translations are generally completely incoherent. The humour appears to be a result of dictionary-aided literal translation, which causes many idiomatic expressions to be translated wildly inappropriately. For example, the Portuguese phrase ' is translated as ''raining in jars'', whereas an idiomatic English translation would be ''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, ''O Novo guia da conversação em francês e português'', written by José da Fonseca. Carolino likely added Fonseca's name to the book without his permission in an attempt to give it some credibility. The Portuguese–French phrase book is apparently a competent work, without the defects that characterize ''English As She Is Spoke''. ==Cultural appraisals and influence== Mark Twain said of ''English As She Is Spoke'' 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."〔Mark Twain, ''Introduction to The New Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese and English" (1883) p. 239〕 Stephen Pile mentions this work in ''The Book of Heroic Failures'', and comments: "Is there anything in conventional English which could equal the vividness of '' Tristan Bernard wrote a very short comedy with a similar name, ''L'Anglais tel qu'on le parle''. Ionesco's ''La Cantatrice Chauve'' is mostly made of language conversation book lines used out of context. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「English As She Is Spoke」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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