The scanned copy of the book at Internet Archive [0] is probably a better representation of this text than the pdf made from a Word document that the title links to.
I think this highlights some differences between now and the 19th century.
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.
This kind of thing still happens today. For example this reminded me of the Scots Wikipedia story, which took many years before being discovered: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24273851
There are still plenty of topics in which one can "appear credible"—and given chatGPT's skill in bullshitting about various topics, it's easier than ever.
I'm not sure how my comment was interpreted as "it's impossible to be wrong". I made a narrow claim that faking English knowledge in Brazil and Portugal is harder today than in the 19th century.
It is, relative to the 19th century. It is much easier for anyone with internet access to immerse themselves in English language media.
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.
In a similar vein, "do the needful" has become so entrenched in some of my friends' vernacular that it's now used almost completely unironically.
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).
"do the needful", "please revert back to me"-- phrases like these are not 'invented' by some Indian speakers. These are the stuff Indian savants picked up from the old English books. Then, these savants taught this stuff to fellow Indians and this dynamic gets reproduced everyday.
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."
It's interesting to see where it came from, but why does it persist? Is consuming English language media and the largest internet sites uncommon for English speaking people in India? I imagine I'd notice pretty quickly that English speakers in TV, movies, and on youtube, don't speak the way they did in the 1800s.
So, India inherited the British civil services system wholesale. The formal pseudo legal language used in the system, instituted by the British, continued. It was different enough from the language taught in schools that when someone was exposed to it or had to use it tried to conform to it's idiosyncrasies.
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.
These are a class of mistake mainly made by native English speakers, but I've ended up using words like "irregardless" and "misunderestimated" unironically because I used them ironically for so long that I forgot
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.
"Envious" has all but completely been absorbed by "jealous" in the vernacular. People just use "jealous" for both things. Good thing there can never be any ambiguity about which sense is intended.
"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.
Sure, it has a history. Any use that is described as incorrect has a history, else it wouldn't come up. Is it distracting? Is there another word that perfectly replaces it, is understood by practically all English speakers, and that's not distracting? Yes and yes, so: "to be composed of" should be preferred. I further doubt, very much, that the choice to substitute "to be comprised of" is an informed one in very nearly all cases—its presence is a "smell", if you will, which does mean it conveys some information, but most of the time that information is not something that the person using it is trying to express, which makes it a mistake.
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.
Cool. Words are defined by how people use them, not the other way around. People have been using it enough for the "official" definition to have expanded to include your pet peeve usage, and is undeniably actually correct usage no matter how many paragraphs you type out having no relevance to the matter. Complaining about it won't accomplish anything, it's over. Unless your goal is to try to change the definition of "incorrectly" to mean "in ways I don't like", which would be really surprising given the rest of your comments.
Descriptions and sound advice needn't be in agreement.
[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.
Merriam Webster are the arch-descriptivists. If a usage is attested anywhere, MW lists it as correct. Basically, they don't believe that any usage attested anywhere can be incorrect. If you want to know whether a usage is correct or not, don't ask MW.
Descriptivist dictionaries aren't about giving advice on usage that best communicates, so consulting them as a usage guide is usually not the best idea. They're to help one understand unfamiliar words or usage—including common but maybe-not-great ones!—not to use as a guide to what's best. Finding a definition in a dictionary isn't enough to justify a choice, aside from confirming that one has not done something entirely novel.
That’s the thing. Nobody is. Words were not handed down from god. Language changes continuously. Notice how we aren’t speaking proto-indo-european any more?
I'm trying to avoid this conversation :-) I think descriptivism/prescriptivism is probably off-topic in this thread.
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.
It's weird how people mix these up, I think it's due to incorrectly assuming it's related to the verb "to wear".
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.
I wonder if this particular mixup is due to people using voice dictation instead of typing. iOS makes that particular error all the time when I dictate.
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.
You'd think so, but I've when I've brought this up (and weary/wary) people often do the "languages evolve" thing. It's happened before with things like "colour" and "aluminium" so I don't think we can rule it out again.
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").
When I first started working I thought this was normal business speak. Thankfully my bosses noticed and when I told them it was definitely not spiteful or ironic, they tactfully educated me on the finer points of Indian phraseology.
> One of my Iranian colleagues back when I worked in an office had many entertaining phrases, like:
> "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/, ...).
Not in the same vein as the link, but I had an Iranian colleague tell me his wife was working occasionally as a babysitter, in technical violation of her visa... but he couldn't think of how to say this in English. He moved his finger back and forth under his nose and said in Iran he'd say she's working "under the mustache". I thought this was hilarious and told him how we'd say she's working "under the table".
I have never independently confirmed if this was an actual saying in Iran or not. (Google is not helpful.)
Since you mentioned it, I have to bring up the fact that fans of this, er, masterpiece made a (shockingly?) high quality audio dub over the entirety of the original with the dumped subtitles: https://youtu.be/XziLNeFm1ok
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.
I find that grammar perversions like this have a direct line to my funny bone in a way that almost nothing else does. Must have something to do with the subversion of expectation with something so incredibly basic as language.
> 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!".
Me too. It was a very old meme from my college days in China back in 2000. There were only very few at that time and one was that. I've always wondered if it's true.
The Idiotisms and Proverbs section is one of the more hilarious and I wonder how many of them can be mapped back to originals. The only one I could trace is A horse baared don't look him the tooth, which presumably maps back to Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
Probably quite a few of them are no longer common in English either by now, which makes computing the inverse harder.
A cartoon I saw years ago shows two men sitting at a table in a café. There's a book or two on the table. One says to the other: "Why you be not happy with me as translator of books by you?"
I believe it's in Vertigo Park And Other Tall Tales by Mark O'Donnell but it's appeared in the Spy magazine December 1987 before that.
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 am reading a book on fuzzy logic that was translated from Japanese. The translation is quite bad and difficult to read. At one point it was talking about calculus and mentioned Newton and "Ripunitz". It took me a minute to work out what I was reading:
> 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.
What's remarkable is how good machine translation (DeepL, Google Translate) has become at handling idiomatic expressions in recent years. Still not perfect, of course (there's still the odd clanger), but anyone trying to do the same task today would fare considerably better.
There's a problem that this is a perfectly fine phrase that depends heavily on context. Are you in the middle of complaining about the state the night shift left your establishment in? Probably not an idiomatic use then.
`all over the shop' meaning all over the place, not literally all over a shop/store which is what Google Translate and DeepL translate it as. It's British and Irish.
Yes, "all over the shop" is an adverbial expression meaning someone/something was haphazard, lacking in control, or behaving unusually.
"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"?
I think in that context, it's already literal. "All over the shop" as an idiom means disorganized, chaotic. I don't use it to mean "all over the place" in the sense of something pervading some location.
How can you disagree if you then instantly disqualify your own opinion? DeepL is on a whole other level than Google, they aren't even comparable in quality. Try yourself if you are curious.
DeepL gives you the following for "There's mud all over the shop":
"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":
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".
Shop in this context does not mean a place where you buy things, it most likely meant workshop originally but in this idiomatic phrase it just means place.
Which was kind of my point – DeepL knows that (sometimes). In the above case ("mud all over the shop"), it offers you "place" ("Ort") as an alternative translation for "shop". So it seems to have some inkling that an actual shop may not be what is meant. This means it's up to the user to decide which it is, which to me seems fair enough.
(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.)
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.
[0] - https://archive.org/details/englishassheissp00applrich/page/...