English as She Is Spoke

Mark Twain said of English as She Is Spoke 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."[6]

Maybe a weekend playing with gpt-3 will prove otherwise.

Edit: nevermind it's not even grammatical

nkozyra• 6 years ago

nevermind it's not even grammatical

Neither is proper English ;)

colanderman3• 6 years ago

it's not even grammatical

That's what GPT-2 is for!

"To craunch a marmoset, it may take less than two hours. But a brindle should be done within five."

"You mistake you! It is a frog. It is one of the most powerful of the edible frogs,' Jadon said as he dragged its body slowly toward the throne."

"That pond it seems me many multiplied of fishes. Let us amuse rather to the fishing. This fish filled with colors, motion. O green and smooth, It move a high spiral."

andai• 6 years ago

Did you pre-train it on anything?

cbfrench2• 6 years ago

“You mistake you! It is a frog.” remains one of my all-time favorite phrases.

mumblemumble• 6 years ago

Sounds like the OG Google Translate.

codazoda• 6 years ago

Now I wonder, was the poorly translated game translated that way on purpose?

From memory:

Someone set us up the bomb!
Make your time, ha ha ha.

nerdponx• 6 years ago

For anyone who hasn't seen it: https://youtu.be/jQE66WA2s-A

stickfigure• 6 years ago

...you are one of today's lucky 10,000!

howlgarnish3• 6 years ago

That would be Zero Wing of "All your base are belong to us" fame, and no, that was just a bad translation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_your_base_are_belong_to_us

Random anecdote: in 2005, when "all your base" was still in peak meme, I happened to be in Kuta Square in Bali with a friend when Jemaah Islamiyah blew up one of their devices. Rattled but unharmed and unclear on what exactly had just happened, we returned to our hotel and watched TV news. Once the penny dropped, the following dialogue ensued:

- What happen?

- Someone set us up the bomb.

joshspankit11• 6 years ago

Was that dialog on the TV news??

coldpie• 6 years ago

There's a great discussion of what a proper translation of Zero Wing might have been like here: https://legendsoflocalization.com/lets-take-a-peek-at-zero-w...

colanderman3• 6 years ago

Zero Wing has nothing on the Vietnamese bootleg translation of Pokémon Crystal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ_bhwCgtXg

Do you know how to use the phone?
Of course, first you insert the pin of Xiuci, and then I select the Holy Figure!

waiseristy2• 6 years ago

Google translate still spits out some pretty funny translations

Portuguese: Este lago parece-me bem piscoso. Vamos pescar para nos divertirmos.

Google: This lake looks very fishy to me. Let's go fishing for fun.

Actual : This lake looks full of fish. Let's have some fun fishing.

mtippett2• 6 years ago

"Missed it by that much". Posted almost exactly the same within 30 seconds of you...

Actually thought that I had some how double posted.

waiseristy2• 6 years ago

Lol you even formatted it similarly

ma2rten2• 6 years ago

DeepL (which is sometimes better than Google) returns almost the same translation:

This lake looks pretty fishy to me. Let's go fishing for fun.

Maybe the language that the book uses is dated making those machine translation systems trip up?

frozenlettuce• 6 years ago

"piscoso" is a very specific term (if I google that I get just dictionary entries, almost no actual use). Replacing it with "cheio de peixe" (full of fish) would make the translation much easier

mtippett2• 6 years ago

Google translate is just as humorous and reasonably similar. eg:

Este lago parece-me bem piscoso. Vamos pescar para nos divertirmos.

Google -> This lake looks very fishy to me. Let's go fishing for fun. English as She is Spoke -> That pond it seems me many multiplied of fishes. Let us amuse rather to the fishing.

English version -> This lake looks full of fish. Let's have some fun fishing.

joshspankit11• 6 years ago

“Let us amuse, rather, to the fishing!”

I could almost see this in a period drama.

jet_329512• 6 years ago

Making paps for the cats over here.

russellbeattie• 6 years ago

An interesting cultural phenomenon is taking place because of automated translation services like Google Translate. I learned of it in another thread on HN a few months ago. People are realizing that what they write will be translated by machine and are adjusting their written language accordingly. This is one of those interesting side effects of tech on culture that is not immediately obvious, I think.

It's basically an extension of "international English" which avoids things like phrasal verbs or coloquialisms, but more from the standpoint of, "If my coworker in Shenzhen puts this text into Google Translate and tries to create documentation from it, is it going to sound ridiculous?" And then doing a few translate/reverse-translate passes yourself until you've tweaked the text enough so the input and output is the same. Eventually, you start writing this way by default.

This could be considered the same as telegram abbreviations, or even text-speak like "LOL" or whatever, but the key in this instance is we're changing our way of communicating based on what a computer can understand, not a fellow human.

joshspankit11• 6 years ago

This seems like a dangerous short-term tactic.

What happens when the translation software gets better or just changes? Suddenly your text comes out wrong again.

AussieWog93• 6 years ago

You've misunderstood the parent. He's not suggesting that you speak in order to attain some predicted Google Translate output, but instead it's helpful to use precise language that doesn't rely on a shared contextual understanding.

For example, you'd use the phrase "upload it to the server" rather than "put it on the server" - the verb "upload" is unambiguous and lets both the recipient and the translation software know that "server" is referring to a computer system.

tkgally• 6 years ago

People are realizing that what they write will be translated by machine and are adjusting their written language accordingly.

Machine translation is becoming part of foreign-language education, too. In Japan, some teachers of English have started introducing their students to MT and showing them how to use it to communicate better in English. One technique for a native Japanese speaker to use MT when writing English is to modify the Japanese input so that it is translated more accurately. For example, subjects are often omitted from Japanese sentences when they can be understood from the context, and MT regularly mistranslates such sentences; the English output improves if all subjects are made explicit in the Japanese input.

The use of MT in foreign-language education, however, makes some educators and students uncomfortable, as it is not yet known whether reliance on MT when studying a foreign language hinders, helps, or has no effect on long-term language acquisition.

A paper discussing these and related issues is here:

https://researchmap.jp/multidatabases/multidatabase_contents...

madrox• 6 years ago

A similarly unintentional comedy in translation was a book I found several years ago that I believe was an autotranslation: "How to Good-bye Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way?". The amazon reviews are similarly hilarious.

https://www.amazon.com/How-Good-bye-Depression-Constrict-Eve...

ma2rten2• 6 years ago

That's crazy, according to the reviews the first 90 pages are also just usenet conversations where people are making fun of the author who apparently just copy-pasted the conversations into the book.

0xbadcafebee• 6 years ago

This sounds like a work of genius. Unfortunately I have not resurrected my Abby's so I great I may next movie the thrush.

livueta• 6 years ago

I have a copy of this! I found it in a used bookstore years ago and had to grab it.

I'm pretty sure it's not auto-translated: like the sibling said, the first half-ish of the book is a verbatim collection of Usenet posts of the author, from 1999, writing in his characteristic broken English, earnestly laying out his anus-constricting theories while getting mildly trolled.

The rest of it is a screed in the same style. Opening to a random page (really, didn't have to look for samples), we see

Besides shooting out a big blank from your buttock, you can feel as if your root chakra leaked sweet hot mucus. You can feel your root chakra as if it were an exciting womb. Cabala says "human being could have lived on the earth of high temperature long ago years as a human being of immaterial hermaphrodite". I think there has been the imprint of immaterial hermaphrodite in our physical body.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure it's closer to Time Cube via English as a second language than bad/autotranslation per se - as far as I can tell it was originally written in English as there doesn't appear to be anything with a similar title in Japanese by anyone with that name, and there's a fair amount of common English-written-by-Japanese-speakers grammatical errors and other smells.

hooande• 6 years ago

well? ...did the anus constricting work??

kome2• 6 years ago

thank you for asking the real questions!

m463• 6 years ago

Well, I tried it and now my hovercraft is full of eels.

wruza• 6 years ago

I tried doing that ten times in a succession and it’s hard. Can someone please explain shortly the essence of this method? Or what’s the joke is, at least.

corytheboyd• 6 years ago

Oh my, thank you for introducing this into my life lol

temp0826• 6 years ago

Best coffee table book ever.

anaerobicover• 6 years ago

There's a bunch of background on the book at Everything2: https://everything2.com/title/How+to+Good-Bye+Depression%253...

(and the title is thoroughly mashed up and reused across the site for comedic effect)

joshspankit11• 6 years ago

I hope this is not too off-topic, but I really wish there were more (excellent) “literal translations”.

Yes: it would be tricky and unpalatable for much of the audience, but I personally find it fascinating to get in to the “mind” of a language and would like the opportunity without having to memorize (something I find particularly challenging) the “words” of a language.

Movie and TV subtitles especially.

dheera• 6 years ago

A lot of times literal translations eventually become a part of the destination language as well.

Examples include "long time no see" which is now common in English but has roots in either Chinese or Native American languages.

Likewise, the phrasing "chicken-egg problem" originated in Western culture but is now often used literally in modern Chinese, e.g. "雞和蛋的問題".

amyjess• 6 years ago

The proper word for such translations, by the way, is "calque".

Another famous calque is "groudhog", which comes from the Dutch aardvark. Yes, the two animals are completely unrelated: the Dutch referred to them both as aardvark though, and only one of them got calqued into English.

exolymph2• 6 years ago

YES. I'm stoked about David Bentley Hart's New Testament translation for that reason: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/030024844X/ref=ox_sc_sav...

Reproducing the texts' often fragmentary formulations without augmentation or correction, he has produced a pitilessly literal translation, one that captures the texts' impenetrability and unfinished quality while awakening readers to an uncanniness that often lies hidden beneath doctrinal layers.

fredophile• 6 years ago

This might not have been common in the past but it isn't a new thing. I know my dad had a copy of the new testament that had the original Greek on one line and a word by word translation on the next. Not the most readable translation or layout but interesting if you wanted to get closer to the original writing.

mduncs• 6 years ago

If you're stoked for that, then I would be remiss to not say something about Robert Alter's one man translation of the Hebrew Bible.

From wiki: "Alter's translation aims to convey the literary style of the original Hebrew text in English, recreating as much as possible its poetic rhythms and metaphors"

I think many of the Psalms and Ecclesiastes in particular are more beautifully rendered in his translation

cbfrench2• 6 years ago

It’s up for conjecture how “pitilessly literal” the DBH translation is. As is the case with most translations, he imports his own agenda (particularly with regard to his universalist soteriology). It’s good, but it’s also not as “pitilessly” objective as he may believe it to be.

Traduttore, traditore, etc.

ignoranceprior• 6 years ago

I think Interlinear Texts tries to do something similar, showing the original language and literal word-for-word meaning in English:

https://interlinearbooks.com/

whym• 6 years ago

You are thinking about foreignization, which is more common (but still not really common) in the translation of literary fictions than that of subtitles. I think most movies don't do that because they target casual audience who is not ready to consume too much foreignization.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication_and_foreignizati...

henrikschroder5• 6 years ago

Well, one more example for the TV show I spent time translating: It's a teen high school drama, but it's a Norwegian high school, not an American high school. The characters have all just started high school, but during your first year in Norway, you and your classmates will vary in age from 15-16-17, and high school lasts three years, not four.

If you use "freshmen" to describe them, you get the "new at school" aspect, but viewers will get the completely wrong idea about their age. If you use "juniors", you get the age aspect right, but their role and social standing at school would be completely off.

So in a case like that, domesticating the translation simply doesn't work, you'd get super confused as a viewer if you use American high school terms. So you have to foreignize it, you have to call them something else, and you have to make up new terms when translating the various Norwegian derogatory terms for first-year students that exist.

saurik• 6 years ago

Since words don't have a one-to-one mapping or anything--even in cases where the mapping of words themselves makes sense (and if often doesn't, as words in language say have different attachments for how to convey meaning)--this is still mostly a subjective translation problem; if you want to come close to this I recommend playing with apps like Pleco (for Chinese) that are designed to give you the source text in the original language and then let you click each word to get a dictionary definition (in your language) for each word (which of course isn't a single word and can't be, which is the problem with trying to get a "literal" translation). (I think Google Translate might have a mode like this?)

henrikschroder5• 6 years ago

I've spent a considerable amount subtitling a TV series, and there were subtitles floating around for it before I started, but they contained a ton of bad English; wrong idioms, and wrong word order.

But when I did my translation, I tried to stick to the word order and expressions of the original language when possible. You could translate each sentence to the most likely way an English-speaking person would express themselves, but can also stray a bit, pick something that's closer to the original, but still works. I wanted to subtly remind people that they're not in Kansas anymore. Even though the show is a teen high school drama, it's absolutely not an American high school, so you can't use words associated with that either.

One example from the French remake: In English, a conventional piece of dialogue goes "I love you" - "I love you too".

But in French, that dialogue goes "Je t'aime" - "Moi aussi". So in this case we actually picked "Me too" as the translation for that, which definitely sticks out, but comes across as a little bit of a teaching French moment, because you can clearly hear that the character isn't saying "Je t'aime aussi".

That's kinda what you were looking for, right?

However, somewhere there is a line, across which lies a sea of Bad English, and even further from that line, you get the incomprehensible gibberish of the work in the article, and you really, really don't want to end up there.

kome2• 6 years ago

"But in French, that dialogue goes "Je t'aime" - "Moi aussi". So in this case we actually picked "Me too" as the translation for that, which definitely sticks out, but comes across as a little bit of a teaching French moment, because you can clearly hear that the character isn't saying "Je t'aime aussi"."

true! and to be honest, also the first one isn't probably meaning "je t'aime" at all

js2• 6 years ago

There's multiple translations of the closing dialog in Breathless. (Of course, even the English title isn't a literal translation of À bout de souffle—that would be Out of Breath.)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breathless_(1960_film)#Closi...

ani-ani• 6 years ago

For fr/en, author Jean-Loup Chiflet has written a few books consisting entirely of what you're describing. The most famous is "Sky My Husband (dictionary of the running English)"

yongjik• 6 years ago

I'm in the skeptical camp when it comes to literal translations - I don't think it shows the "mind" of the source language. If anything, I think it has the opposite effect of losing the forest in search of trees, or making phrases unnecessarily more "exotic" than they originally are.

E.g., if I say in Korean that I've become "green onion kimchi", I'm not picturing green onion kimchi in my mind. (I don't even particularly like green onion kimchi.) I'm saying I'm dead tired. When I say "my nose is three feet", I'm not picturing my face being deformed like Pinocchio - I'm saying I'm in no situation to help another.

joshspankit11• 6 years ago

In cases like that it would be up to me as the fascinated viewer to dig in to those idioms. It would be helped with a translator’s notes of course, but I would expect it to take a little extra time and effort to watch a show like that.

At the end in your example, I feel like I would have a deeper understanding of kimchi as it relates to Korean speakers, how “green onion kimchi” is different, and why that means someone is dead tired.

Then, next time it comes up I would understand it a little better due to slightly different context.

To me, that all feels like a win

joshspankit11• 5 years ago

Couldn’t not share this here, even though I suspect no more than 5 people will ever see this comment: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMJEPfv6Q/

GauntletWizard• 6 years ago

I recently finished "Control", and there's a major character who speaks significantly in finish idioms that were directly translated: "I can tell you are not a yesterday's grouse's son"[1] I definitely got most of it from context; "take them behind the sauna" isn't that different from "Take them out back", and it was a fun way to make the character "weird" (which is important for story reasons)

[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/controlgame/comments/d5f0ki/ahtis_i...

dmichulke• 6 years ago

If you're trying to learn a language, use the Assimil books.

They have the target language on the left side and usually both a literal and an easy-to-understand translation on the same height of the page on the right side.

Sometimes with explanations as to where the expression comes from.

Also: very little grammar (only to the extended needed, nothing upfront)

Best books I ever found for learning languages.

I have no affiliation, but learnt 2 languages to B2/C1 level with their help.

superdisk• 6 years ago

An interesting case of this is the localization of the original Pokémon games. Before they were released officially in North America by Nintendo, a group of Chinese software pirates "translated" them into English first and sold them. The official translation came out later. Needless to say the unofficial translation is totally screwy in a hilarious way. What's even more interesting though is that it's a hyper-literal translation, so things that were localized out in Nintendo's translation (alcohol, death, gambling) are presented in full glory. Team Rocket is known as "The Regiment of the Guided Missile" and the Pokédex is known as "the illustrated handbook of PET," spelled out fully every time. Pokémon are referred to as PETs in general. There's an item called sulfuric acid.

I had a great time playing it and noting the differences/absurd translations with my friends.

aflag• 6 years ago

Interestingly, at least in the wikipedia examples, the literal translation is not even really literal. For instance, "As paredes têm ouvidos." literal translation is "The walls have ears". It's fascinating that they translated to "The walls have hearsay." I think that's an artefact from the initial Portuguese -> French translation.

That book is more like getting a phrase translate into a chain of languages and see what it comes out in the other side.

Blikkentrekker3• 6 years ago

There isn't much of a mind of the language with such matters.

They are idioms and quite often native speakers do not actually realize what they are saying when they use them.

I remember that when I gained more proficiency at Finnish, that many Finns remarked that I was teaching them because I was manually analyzing what was actually literally being said and they never quite considered what they were saying.

Consider that many English speakers when they are saying “God damn it.” they are really not realizing that “God” is the subject, “damn” is the finite verb in the subjunctive mood, and “it” is the direct object, thus expressing a wish that God damn it, whatever “it” might be. — it is an indivisible idiom for them which is also why it is often spelt as one word.

Especially because the subjunctive mood is rarely used as such to express a wish in modern English.

joshspankit11• 6 years ago

I agree with your point about idioms many times being used without awareness of what they “actually” mean, and while I would still say it’s interesting for me to hear/see the idiom anyway, it’s not really the meat of where the “mind” is to me.

There are dozens of examples I can think of, such as how people refer to themselves and to others (Japanese is especially interesting here), how people communicate spatial relationships/directions, and how people refer to body parts (calf in Portuguese literally translates as “potato of the leg”).

It’s said that our language shapes how we think, and just the barest glimpse I’ve seen in to “literal” translations gives me a window in to not only how that’s true, but how particular languages can shape particular thought patterns.

achalshah• 6 years ago

The podcast Futility Closet had an entire episode on the book: https://www.futilitycloset.com/2015/05/18/podcast-episode-58...

thordenmark• 6 years ago

It is well worth reading, or at least browsing through. ie. This phrase perfectly describes my sleeping habits:

"Yesterday at evening, I was to bed so late that I may not rising me soon that morning."

Get your own copy here: http://gutenberg.org/ebooks/30411

exabrial• 6 years ago

I've found literal translations to be very useful when learning phrases in foreign languages and subsequent listening as well.

Syzygies• 6 years ago

Huh. I always thought it was "rain like a cow pissing on a flat rock."

meristem• 6 years ago

I highly recommend the book “The cow went to the swamp”. It is illustrations of Portuguese sayings paired with literal English translations. If you speak Portuguese, it is precious. If you don’t, it is so bizarre you cannot help but laugh.

adrian_b• 6 years ago

Thanks for the recommendation. I have found it and it is indeed hilarious.

AirMax98• 6 years ago

The touchstone of all humor is a really dumb person who thinks that they are smart.

saagarjha2• 6 years ago

For those with an afternoon to burn, check of Star War The Third Gathers: Backstroke of the West, a fan dub of a poor roundtrip translation of The Revenge of the Sith: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XziLNeFm1ok. It’s filled with gems of this type.

ggambetta• 6 years ago

An absolute classic. Here's a summary of the best parts: https://starwarsfans.fandom.com/wiki/Star_War_The_Third_Gath...

Related: a long time ago, in a country far away where I grew up, I had a videotape of Star Wars with Spanish subtitles. It was awful. I think it was done by someone who didn't understand much English and knew nothing of Star Wars. I don't have that masterpiece anymore (nor a VCR player, for that matter), but off the top of my head:

- They translated "Millenium Falcon" as "Numidian Flot". "She can outrun imperial starships" somehow became "it made two imperial starships run away".

- Chewie was Yuri.

- Near the beginning, Vader says something like "send a distress signal, and inform the senate that everyone on board was killed". The translation meant "send a distress signal, gather the senate, and kill everyone".

- Near the end, Luke is doing the trench run, Vader shoots and misses, and says "the force is strong in this one". The translation meant "what a strange swinging motion".

saagarjha2• 6 years ago

Having taken Spanish in high school, I would love to watch that if you happen to find it :)

hermitcrab3• 6 years ago

I have never understood why Chinese companies often have such hilariously bad English translations of their product instructions. Often the product quality is pretty good and the illustrations in the instructions are fine. But the English translation is terrible. There must be millions of Chinese people that speak decent English (in Hong Kong alone).

tim333• 6 years ago

I think they tend to be more expensive and thin in the ground in mainland China - Hong Kongers or native English speakers. That said Google translate does quite a decent job.

Symbiote2• 6 years ago

You need at least one person with at least basic English knowledge to know that the Chinese translation service is bad. (Google is blocked, remember.)

Al-Khwarizmi• 6 years ago

This is just something that I read somewhere so don't take it at face value, maybe someone who knows the issue better can confirm or deny it. But I remember reading that in Asian countries like China and Japan, they tend to base the selection of translators on knowledge of the source language, not the target. That is, they get the translator with the best knowledge of Chinese even if their English is broken.

lqet4• 6 years ago

So is this basically saying that a grammatically incorrect, but factually correct translation is better than a grammatically perfect, but factually incorrect (as the source text was not understood) translation?

TonyTrapp• 6 years ago

It's not an explanation, but I know enough people who are convinced that they actually speak proper English, but most of the time it turns into grammatical gibberish, and they fail to realize that even when you point it out. If you're one of those people and think you are up for the job, and noone else proof-reads what you are actually doing... maybe this would result in this kind of instruction manual?

hashmush• 6 years ago

A Chinese guy I knew was studying for the TOEFL test and was memorizing all kinds of medical terms I'd never heard about, and yet, when he said goodbye he'd also say "I go first". At that time I had no idea why he did it, but as I learned more Mandarin it became clear that he just translated the phrase 我先走 (lit. I first go) which is very common when parting ways.

Point being, many study for tests but can't speak English.

cmrdporcupine• 6 years ago

I love the English language and I have a deep fear that this is the final destination for our language; that given demographics it will start to permanently reflect Mandarin translationisms, at least in the workplace. So many code reviews and design docs I deal with now are full of missing articles and tenses. I try to help with corrections but it can honestly start to feel like you're a big jerk in a code review if you're constantly correcting people's English.

SuoDuanDao2• 6 years ago

It can be done better or worse - some of the best advice I got for teaching ESL was that if someone uses incorrect grammar, to simply repeat the clause with correct grammar and a 'go on?' tone. Immediate, low-friction feedback is one of the best ways to learn, what makes people think you're a jerk is if you call attention to their mistakes.

Of course, that's much easier in conversation than written communication. A good reason to make small talk with your co-workers.

cafard• 6 years ago

Not just English. In my garage is a stepladder, with safety notices in English and Spanish. They are dated "May 20xx/Puede 20xx".

howlgarnish3• 6 years ago

They just put the text in a local equivalent to Google Translate and that's it, no proofreading etc. There's a famous restaurant sign in China that says "Translation server error" on it: https://www.seriouseats.com/2008/07/translate-server-error-r...

There was an early translation program in China that was both popular and notoriously bad. For example, the simplified character 干 has a number of meanings, most commonly "dry", but the program would always pick "fuck" -- the end result being supermarket aisles with signs saying "Fuck Goods" and restaurants offering dishes like "Duck Fuck Noodles". Engrish.com (sic) has a whole category for these:

https://www.engrish.com/category/adult-engrish/

hermitcrab3• 6 years ago

They just put the text in a local equivalent to Google Translate and that's it, no proofreading etc.

I guess that is what they must be doing. But I still don't quite understand why they would spend thousands of dollars creating a product, tooling, packaging, instructions etc and then not spend, what, ~$100 getting a half-way decent translation.

aronpye• 6 years ago

Shaka, when the walls fell

hi412• 6 years ago

As an Indian who is currently living in USA, how do I talk English like the white people? I try but fall short and my jokes are an embarrassment. I dream of one day talking like the white people. But my existence is lonely as no white person invite me home.

zekrioca• 6 years ago

Start first by studying western philosophy.

ASalazarMX• 6 years ago

He said he was lonely already, do you want the white people to actually avoid him?

lioeters• 6 years ago

I've heard that watching a lot of American television shows can be effective. I think that can help you get familiar with commonly used slang, cultural values, typical patterns of behavior. Also, it would be essential to practice in real life, by interacting as much as possible with the "natives".

hi412• 6 years ago

Thank you!

When I was talking , someone said that I talk like I am reading a book. Is spoken English different from written English in books? All English I know is from reading text books in school and college.

Grustaf• 6 years ago

“I know English well, I speak him every day” - A Russian friend

tsoukase• 6 years ago

Literal translations of phrases from Greek to English language is a whole joke category in Greek. We even translate single compound words, eg πολυέλαιος (=chandelier) to 'much oil' (έλαιον=oil)

English as She Is Spoke

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