[Found via BoingBoing via Making Light]
A list of 736 “essentialist explanations” of the form “Language X is essentially language Y under conditions Z”. Some examples:
- English is essentially Norse as spoken by a gang of French thugs.
- German is essentially a language developed by a group of Teutons who gathered in the forest one day to come up with a language that their enemies would have no chance of grasping.
- It is essential, that You the german Syntax and Punctuation right get must.
- Brazilian is essentially Latin without consonants.
etc., etc. Something to while away a rainy day with, while you have lots of more important things to do.
Just make one important distinction: Brazilian is a group of 200 non-Indo-European languages spoken by the aboriginal Peoples of Brazil. There is also Brazilian Portuguese which is another variety of Portuguese or a group of dialects of Portuguese spoken in Brazil. There is also Brazilian German which is a variety of German spoken by German-Brazilian families in the South region of Brazil (who may sometimes be unaware that they speak a different variety of German).
August 31st, 2005, at 1:41 am #