A quick curse in English

Regarding the “fading genre” of the language phrasebook (“How long have you had that goitre?”, October 29th), “English As She Is Spoke” is a Portuguese-English phrasebook written by Pedro Carolino, originally published in 1855. It is hilariously bad. Though he knew no English, Carolino was resourceful. He knew some French and translated from a French-English dictionary.

The result is a phrasebook like no other. It contains such useful conversational points as “Where correspond the bells?” and “All trees have very deal bear”. It memorably includes the hedgehog and the wolf in a list of fish and shellfishes. The book enables the user to converse about civility (“It must never to laugh of the unhappies”), flirtation (“Listen’ to, como hither”), and disaster at sea (“Never have you not done wreck?”). One could argue it even anticipates the Beatles (“Lace me do”). Mark Twain commented that “Nobody can add to the absurdity of this book, nobody can imitate it successfully, nobody can hope to produce its fellow; it is perfect.”

Perhaps this old chestnut was an infamous fraud rather than a proper phrasebook. But as Carolino himself wrote: “If can’t to please at every one’s.”

Bailey Howard Tallahassee, Florida

My husband is tight-lipped about his tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, and I’ve found the best way to understand his day-to-day experience is the addendums he makes to armyissued phrase books. It starts with learning pleasantries and chit-chat (“do you have children?”), as well as some basic military questions (“do you have weapons?”). Soon afterwards there are sections on profanities and sex, the sharing of cigarettes, and descriptions of being bored, carrying too much weight, and a dislike of the rain and mud. At one point he learns how to say, “I need to check on my lazy soldiers”. Towards the end of the book, different handwriting appears, describing idioms like “my moustache is annoying me”.

It all feels rather cosy, until every now and again one is brought up short by sections on bombs, and questions on “‘how many are wounded or killed?” As you said, phrasebooks can be very revealing. Sian Davies

London

My “A Guide-book to Albanian” from 1983 includes the greeting “Dear Comrade”, and “Let’s drink this toast to your leader, Comrade Enver Hoxha and to our Marxist-Leninist Parties.” The parting salutation is “I hope to find you even better next time, even stronger, with even more advanced industry, with your agriculture still more modernised and mechanised.” These remain universal aspirations, not lost in translation.

Chris Wheal London

Monty Python had a unique slant on phrasebooks, with a priceless sketch. John Cleese plays a Hungarian man trying to buy cigarettes. Reading from the book he says to the sales clerk, played by Terry Jones: “My hovercraft is full of eels.” Nigel Brachi

Edmonton, Canada

Oh, the pleasures of translation. In the early 1960s, Gordonstoun School’s standard German phrasebook included the essential “where is the carriage for my servant?” Chris Munro May

London