(Roughly) Daily

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For to ride a horse.

Very dissatisfied customer (brandishing pistol): Here is a horse who have a 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; it want to lead to the farrier.

Terrified horse dealer: Your pistols are its loads?

O Novo Guia da Conversação em Portuguez e Inglez— or English as She is Spoke, as it was titled in it’s English version– was a Portuguese/English phrase book published in 1855.  It’s widely believed that it was written by Pedro Carolino and misleadingly additionally credited to José da Fonseca, whose (perfectly serviceable) Portuguese/French phrase book was the source for Carolino… who spoke no english, and simply used a French/English dictionary to make literal translations from da Fonseca’s work.

The result is a masterpiece of unintentional humor– one of which Mark Twain wrote:

In this world of uncertainties, there is, at any rate, one thing which may be pretty confidently set down as a certainty: and that is, that this celebrated little phrase-book will never die while the English language lasts. Its delicious unconscious ridiculousness, and its enchanting naivete, as are supreme and unapproachable, in their way, as are Shakespeare’s sublimities. Whatsoever is perfect in its kind, in literature, is imperishable: nobody can imitate it successfully, nobody can hope to produce its fellow; it is perfect, it must and will stand alone: its immortality is secure…

Read (or download) English as She is Spoke in its blissful entirety at Project Gutenberg.

* Umberto Eco

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As we polish our phrasing, we might recall that it was on this date in 1494 that the first recorded mention of scotch whiskey occurred: an entry in the Exchequer Rolls lists “Eight bolls of malt to Friar John Cor wherewith to make aqua vitae (water of life, as the then-medicinally-justified liquor was known)”– a sufficient quantity to produce almost 1,500 bottles, suggesting that distilling was already well-established.  Indeed, some historians believe that the “Heather Ale” drink brewed by the Picts was actually early scotch whisky– suggesting that whisky could date back to the late Iron Age (100-50 years BC).

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