Originally conceived as a Portuguese-English phrase book, this literary curiosity was written by an author who, remarkably, spoke no English. With the help of a pair of dictionaries, Pedro Carolino translated a series of expressions from his native Portuguese into French and from French into English. The result is a volume of unintentional hilarity, praised by Mark Twain in his appreciative Introduction for its "miraculous stupidities."
Imagine the Portuguese traveler, with this book in hand, offering grooming tips, "
Dress your hairs
," making polite dinner conversation, "
Like you the soup?
" and inviting an acquaintance to take a walk, "
Let us go to respire the air
." The collection is organized into sections of familiar phrases, familiar dialogues, and familiar letters — which might not strike the native English speaker as particularly familiar, concluding with a selection of humorous anecdotes.
As Twain observed, "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 naïvete are as supreme and unapproachable, in their way, as are Shakespeare's sublimities."