The Amazing True Story of the World's Funniest English Language Textbook
“To craunch the marmoset,” and other delights from “English as She Is Spoke.”
Skip to the end (or click here) for a puzzle I’ve made you. My crash course on how to do cryptic puzzles begins here.
Of all the idioms that never existed in English, “To craunch the marmoset” is, by a very long shot, the funniest. But credit for second, third, fourth, and fifth place also go to the same two men — Pedro Carolino and José da Fonseca, the author and unwitting coauthor of the most unintentionally hilarious phrasebook ever written; originators of such world-beating idiomatic misfires as “To make paps for the cats,” “Few, few the bird make her nest,” and “After the paunch comes the dance.” We’ll come back to the delightful craunching of the poor marmoset in a moment, but first an origin story.
Sometime in 1853, it seems, a Portuguese author, translator, poet, or grifter named Pedro Carolino (accounts vary considerably as to his actual identity, though he has been dubiously linked to a translator of German children’s stories named Pedro Carolino Duarte) came into some kind of contact with a respected scholar and linguist named José da Fonseca, who had written a popular French-Portuguese phrasebook titled O Novo Guia da Conversacao, em Portuguez e Francez (“The New Guide to Conversation in Portuguese and French”). Carolino either persuaded Fonseca to let him adapt his French guide to be used by Portuguese speakers learning English or (much more likely in my opinion) simply added Fonseca’s name to his English edition in order to lend it some authority. The details are vague, but what’s really important here is that:
Carolino had, at best, a very limited understanding of English.
Carolino had, almost certainly, an imperfect command of French.
Despite these considerable handicaps, Carolino thought he could do the whole job with — instead of a Portuguese-English dictionary — an ancient French-English dictionary.
The incredible, spectacularly funny, genuinely timeless masterpiece that resulted is known as “English as She Is Spoke.” Following its discovery by a British traveler in Macao in the 1860s — who incredulously reported to the London press that it was being used by locals as a textbook — it went on to gain fans such as Abraham Lincoln (who had it read aloud to him by his private secretary to take his mind off the Civil War), and Mark Twain, who wrote the introduction to the first English edition in 1883, gushing:
“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. … One cannot open this book anywhere and not find richness.”
And so it was that the marmoset was craunched for an adoring public. But before the craunching (in a section infallibly titled “Idiotisms and Proverbs”), Carolino committed a number of absolutely breathtaking assaults on English that are well worth admiring. You can read the whole thing here, but these are my favorites.
The book opens with a flourish, giving all the best names for body parts in a section titled “Of the Man.” These are, of course:
Next, we’re treated to a short section enumerating the different names English people have for their relatives, specifically:
This much we know, as our quater-grandfathers and gossip mistresses knew before us, but what — I am sure you are wondering — do English people eat? Well, quell your rumbling tummies, because the menu Carolino has prepared for us in his “Eatings” section is a scorcher:
Yummy. After this hearty fare, it would be very un-English of us not to take a postprandial stroll, perhaps by the seaside in the hopes that we might see some “fishes and shell-fishes,” including these lovely specimens:
Carolino has painted nature in her most exquisite glory, bringing to life a vivid tableau where the large lobster frolics with his fishy friends the wolf and the hedge hog, while a sorte of fish swims by, hunting torpedo for her supper. These escapades will no doubt put you in the mood for a game of your own, and you may choose from any of the classic English sports, from “foot-ball” to “pile,” from “carousal” to “keel,” from a rousing game of “gleek” to a challenging bout of “even or non even.”
Lest your gleek-mates think you rude at halftime, our guide has given us some classic English phrases that we can use for small talk, including the refined and cerebral “These apricots and these peaches make me and to come water in mouth;” the somewhat peremptory “Wax my shoes,” “Dry this wine,” and “I have mind to vomit;” and the vivid but genuinely concerning “This room is filled of bugs.”
Before proceeding to his legendary section on “Idiotisms and Proverbs,” Carolino gives us a wealth of anecdotes we can use to entertain our hosts at teatime. There are far too many good ones to choose from, but I think my favorite is the cautionary tale of Janson and Boileau. Perhaps you know it?
The commander Forbin of Janson, being at a repast with a celebrated Boileau, had undertaken to pun him upon her name:—"What name, told him, carry you thither? Boileau: I would wish better to call me Drink wine." The poet was answered him in the same tune:—"And you, sir, what name have you choice? Janson: I should prefer to be named John-Meal. The meal don't is valuable better than the furfur?"
You can read the rest at your leisure (or have your private secretary read it to you as Lincoln did), but let’s briefly demystify the craunching of the marmoset before we go. In choosing the idioms to put in his perfectly educational French-Portuguese phrasebook, Fonseca had sensibly chosen French equivalents for Portuguese sayings rather than attempting to do things literally, as Carolino would later do with his English edition. And the French do have an (obsolete) expression — “croquer le marmot” — that equates to something like the English “champing at the bit.” In French, “croquer” has an archaic meaning of “to pound” and a modern meaning of “to crunch,” and a “marmot” was “an old-fashioned ornamental door knocker.” In English, of course, a marmot is a pudgy little buck-toothed ground squirrel — and thus “craunching the marmoset” means “feeling impatient.” You can absolutely use it anytime you like.
I have made you a puzzle. The puzzle image is below if you want to print it out like our forebears used to, but you can also fill it in with a click!
Marvelous content, or, as Carolino has taught me to say, these apricots and these peaches make me and to come water in mouth.
That was delightfully entertaining, thanks Jack!