This afternoon I’ve watched a fascinating video about a rather unhelpful English phrase book from the 19th century called English As She Is Spoke. The problem was that it was translated from a French phrase book without acknowledgement and by someone whose first language was Portuguese. It isn’t even clear how much French they had but certainly not enough linguistic nouse to know that idioms from one language can rarely be translated successfully on a word by word basis!

Here’s the full video: