[Sca-cooks] Re: [ANSAX-L] English is essentially....

[Laura C. Minnick]

Forgive me for cross-posting, but this just cam through from an Anglo-Saxon 
list I'm on, and I found it very amusing. Enjoy!

'Lainie

>Languagehat (http://www.languagehat.com/) had an entry today on a site by
>John Cowen (http://mercury.ccil.org/~cowan/essential.html) listing
>essentialist statements about various languages.  The list is satirical in
>nature, satirizing both the languages in question and essentialist
>statements about language in general.  I thought the list would like the
>following:
>
>English is essentially Anglo-Saxon with all the cool bits taken out.
>--Thomas Leigh
>
>English is what you get from Normans trying to pick up Saxon girls.
>--Bryan Maloney
>
>English is essentially Pictish that was attacked out of nowhere by Angles
>cohabiting with Teutons who were done in by a drunk bunch of Vikings
>masquerading as Frenchmen who insisted they spoke Latin and Greek but
>lacked the Arabic in which to convey that.
>--Bill Hammel
>
>English is essentially a stripped-down Germanic lang with Baroque-style
>Norman French ornamentation glued on at odd angles.
>--Adam Walker
>
>The Queen's English is essentially Modern Anglo-Saxon as passed on by
>generation after generation of stiff necked Norman nobles with their noses
>in the air.
>--ilvi
>
>Inglish iz issenshali a langwidje dhat, wen rittun fonetkli, iz ilejibul
>tu netiv spikerz.
>--Peter Bleackley

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"No people can be great who have ceased to be virtuous."
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