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.”

Jack Shepherd
Cellar Door
Published in
6 min readFeb 15

--

A section from “English as She Is Spoke” titled “Idiotisms and Proverbs,” with the following “Idiotisms”: “The necessity don’t know the low. Few, few the bird make her nest. He is not valuable to breat that he eat. It are some blu stories. Nothing some money, nothing of Swiss.”

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…

--

--

Jack Shepherd
Cellar Door

I have a newsletter about crossword puzzles and a podcast about rom-coms. Formerly editorial director @BuzzFeed. Email: JackAShepherd at gmail