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From: John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>
Subject: More Essentialist Explanations
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The following is a list of "essentialist explanations" of the
form "Language X is essentially language Y under conditions Z".
New contributions are solicited, especially from American
and African languages.  No flames, please.
We do but jest, poison in jest, no offence in the world.

Norwegian is essentially Danish spoken with a Swedish accent.
	--Eugene Holman

Danish is essentially Norwegian spoken with a sore throat.
	--Kaare Albert Lie

[Danish is] Norwegian spoken while eating a hot potato.
	--Eugene Holman

English is essentially bad Dutch with outrageously
pronounced French and Latin vocabulary.
	--Eugene Holman

English is essentially a bizarre dialect of Chinese, pronounced
entirely in the first tone.
	--John Cowan

French is essentially the first syllables of Latin
words spoken with a headcold.
	--Eugene Holman

[Francophones are essentially] Germans speaking the bad Latin they
were taught by Gauls.
	--Daniel von Brighoff

Italian is essentially bad Latin.
	--Eugene Holman

Spanish is essentially bad Italian.
	--Eugene Holman

Catalan is essentially bad Spanish mixed with even worse French.
	--Eugene Holman

Portuguese is essentially bad Spanish, mumbled.
	--Eugene Holman

Finnish is essentially Estonian spoken in the genitive case.
	--Eugene Holman

Conversely, Estonian is essentially Finnish with most
unstressed and final syllables suppressed.
	--Eugene Holman

Bulgarian is essentially Russian pronounced like it is
spelled and using English grammar.
	--Eugene Holman

Faroese is essentially bad Icelandic.
	--Eugene Holman

Slovenian is essentially Russian with an Italian accent.
	--Egbert Lenderink

This [sc., Russian with an Italian accent] is actually
how I tend to view Bulgarian.
	--Daniel von Brighoff

Modern Greek is essentially classical Greek with all vowels and 
diphthongs changed to "i".
	--Egbert Lenderink

[Modern Greek is essentially] Classical Greek as spoken by Venetians.
	--Daniel von Brighoff

Hungarian is essentially German with all sounds randomly shuffled.
	--Egbert Lenderink

Finnish is essentially Swedish with all sounds randomly shuffled.
	--Egbert Lenderink

Breton is obviously Welsh spoken with an aoutRAAAAgeous Franch acSANT.
	--Daniel von Brighoff

Welsh [is essentially] [s]ome reasonable language that had its
stock of vowels pillaged by Polynesians, yes, but
which one?  Irish?  They really don't sound that much alike.
	--Daniel von Brighoff

Polish is [essentially] Russian spoken by a Frenchman.
	--Daniel von Brighoff

Dutch is essentially German as spoken by the members of a conspiracy
who pretend not to speak German.
	--John Cowan

Frisian is essentially English as spoken by the Dutch.
	--John Cowan

Yiddish is essentially bad German mixed with worse Hebrew
and execrable Russian.
	--John Cowan

Lithuanian is essentially bad Sanskrit.
	--John Cowan

Ukrainian is essentially Russian spoken by people with
cleft palates.
	--John Cowan

All (other) Turkic languages are essentially obsolete Turkish.
	--John Cowan

Hebrew is essentially Arabic mangled by Europeans.  But then,
so is Maltese.
	--John Cowan

Urdu is essentially Hindi as spoken by Muslims; Hindi
is essentially Urdu as spoken by Hindus.
	--John Cowan

Bislama is essentially an Austronesian language with
English vocabulary.
	--John Cowan (thanks to Jacques Guy)

Samoan/Hawaiian/Maori is essentially bad Hawaiian/Maori/Samoan.
	--John Cowan

Papiamento is essentially Dutch Spanish.
	--John Cowan

Afrikaans is essentially Dutch baby talk; Dutch is
essentially Afrikaans as spoken by a corpse.
	--John Cowan

Esperanto is essentially bad Romance with lots of German
and some Russian stirred in.
	--John Cowan

Basque is essentially bad Gibberish.
	--John Cowan

-- 
John Cowan						cowan@ccil.org
			e'osai ko sarji la lojban
