English as she is spoke

Book #21 was English as she is Spoke, by Jose da Fonseca and Pedro Carolino, and edited by Paul Collins. Normally, I wouldn't make such an effort to list the editor, but in this book's case it is germaine to both why I bought and read the book, and to why the book should be read at all. Paul Collins was the mastermind behind one of my favorite books from this year's reading odyssey, Barnvard's Folly. Mr. Collins is part of that McSweeney's crowd, which has far too much time and talent, and a habit of having hands in many literary pies (for example, he's a fellow Blogger blogger). Mr. Collins' newest project is resurrecting old, out of print books which he feels need to be looked at anew. He resurrects then, edits them, and then publishes them, through McSweeney's. Much of what he resurrects is fiction, which is very much not my thing, but English as she is Spoke, gave me a great chance to partake in his project without having to read a story.

So the book. Pedro Carolino wanted to write a phrase book for Portuguese students heading to America. Problem: he doesn't speak English. Workaround: he translates it into French using a Frecnh/Portuguese phrasebook (courtesy of "co-author" Jose), and then uses a French/English dictionary to complete the epic work. Collins' introduction does a marvelous job of setting the stage to this bizarre hacking of the english language and is far too short for my tastes - since I like my Collins' book length :)

The book arms Portuguese travelers with such time-honored English phrases as: "To buy a cat in pocket" and "The walls have heresay." The book translates common words, phrases, conversational tidbits, anecdotes, and proverbs. The translations break into three camps. The ones that are passable "In the country of blinds, the one eyed men are kings" - where you know what he's getting at and it's not terribly far off course. The unintentionally funny "What news tells me? All Hairs dressers are news mongers" - where it's just sensible enough to be funny and weird. And the completely nonsensical - "That are the dishes whose you must be and to abstain" - where I just have no idea what he was getting at.

The book is great for the sheer absurdity of 90+% of it. But it's hard to "read." The English is, as expected, attrocious, but to sit down and read, just wears you down after a while. Still, something I'm glad to have on my shelf as a pick me up and a reminder that no matter how bad my grammar, diction, and spelling - it could be a LOT worse.

A fun game to play with the book is up on http://www.zompist.com/spoke.html - which compares the real translation of the Portuguese phrase in the book, shows the English as she is Spoke translation, and then shows the Babelfish version. It's all quite a farsical romp.